Eckhart to rise as Frankenstein's monster

Aaron Eckhart is set to pile on the prosthetics to play Frankenstein's monster in a re-imagining of Mary Shelley's classic story.

The Dark Knight star has signed up to appear in I, Frankenstein, a new film based on Underworld co-creator Kevin Grevioux's graphic novel of the same name, which sees Shelley's monster having survived into the present day.

The movie's screenwriter and director, Stuart Beattie, tells Variety, "Mary Shelley's story is about the creation of the first human being. This is the story about that being becoming human."

Eckhart follows in the footsteps of Hollywood's most famous Frankenstein's monster, Boris Karloff, and Robert De Niro, who played the creature in 1994 film Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.

Filming of I, Frankenstein is due to begin in January (12) in Australia.