EXCLUSIVE: In the first project he has set at Sony Pictures Entertainment since exiting the co-president post to become a producer, Matt Tolmach is at the center of a preemptive pitch deal for Frankenstein. The film will be a contemporary version of the Mary Shelley novel. Craig Fernandez pitched the project and will write the script. Tolmach will produce through Matt Tolmach Productions.

Tolmach ended his run as co-president alongside Doug Belgrad on October 29 to take a multi-year producing deal at the studio that starts with him joining Laura Ziskin and Avi Arad as producers of the 3D Spider-Man reboot. That film begins production in the next few days with The Social Network’s Andrew Garfield playing the title role and Marc Webb directing.

Fernandez’s credits include the upcoming Lionsgate pic From Prada to Nada, described as a Latin spin on Sense and Sensibility. He also just scripted Everything Must Go, a DreamWorks Animation project based on Terry Pratchett’s The Bromeliad Trilogy, and is adapting the Octavia Butler novel Clay’s Ark for DreamWorks Animation and Shrek producer Aaron Warner. Original Artists’ Jordan Bayer, who brokered the Frankenstein deal, will soon shop Fernandez’ script The Courageous, a futuristic adaptation of Rudyard Kipling’s Captains Courageous that will be produced by Jon Shestack.

While Universal is known for its classic monster franchises, SPE went through its own infatuation with horror classics in the early 1990s. That included the 1994 TriStar period pic Frankenstein which starred Robert De Niro as the monster with director Kenneth Branagh as Victor Frankenstein. Columbia Pictures also made the 1992 Francis Coppola-directed Bram Stoker’s Dracula and the 1994 Mike Nichols-directed Wolf.

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