It seems the director of the Mummy films is preparing a new "horror" franchise, with the tweeted news from Production Weekly that Stephen Sommers has his eye on Dean Koontz's Odd Thomas novels.
Koontz has been talking-up an Odd Thomas film for a couple of years, telling Comic Con attendees in 2008 that he had a script he was pleased with and an unnamed actor willing to star. Sommers' potential involvement, then, spells some serious forward momentum for the project, even if his horror to this point has been of the child-friendly variety.
Thomas is a California chef with the psychic ability to talk to ghosts: the** Sixth Sense**-ness of that premise is undercut early in the first book by his statement that, "I see dead people, but then I do something about it." The first book involves a catastrophic event looming over the desert town of Pico Mundo; a character called Fungus Man who has a queue of ghosts following him and later turns poltergeist himself; and Elvis.
Quirky stuff then, and potentially profitably different material for Sommers, after the Mummys, Van Helsing and G.I. Joe. But then again, there's still every opportunity to layer on the CGI with a trowel, so it shouldn't be too far from his comfort zone. In book form, Odd Thomas is followed by Forever Odd, Brother Odd and Odd Hours. There's also a comic-book prequel, In Odd We Trust, so Sommers has plenty to work with.
No indication yet of whether Odd Thomas is in Sommers' diary before, after, or instead of the G.I. Joe sequel.