After the international success of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, its director Niels Arden Oplev is suddenly a hot property. The project he's chosen as his follow-up sees him heading for Hollywood to direct The Keep: Ehren Kruger's adaptation of Jennifer Egan's slim novel.
Not to be confused with the F Paul Wilson novel that became an extraordinary Michael Mann** film** in 1983, this Keep is about two estranged cousins, who reunite to renovate a dilapidated Eastern European castle, with creepy consequences. The book combines gothic tropes with modern twists, leading one reviewer to call it a mash-up of Kafka, Calvino and Poe.
Another cracking literary source for Oplev then. Kruger (apt name for a horror writer) penned the Ring remakes, The Skeleton Key and Terry Gilliam's The Brothers Grimm, so, while the results of those projects have been hit and miss, he knows his way around a dark fantasy. He also wrote Transformers: ROFL and is currently working on a remake of David Cronenberg's Videodrome (er, Bluraydrome?)
The script has been around since 2006, and Rogue Pictures picked it up in 2008. Hopefully it won't be two years before the next update on this story.