The vampire Lestat could finally be heading back to the big-screen as THR writes that Brian Grazer and Ron Howards Imagine Entertainment has optioned the rights to Anne Rices Tale of the Body Thief, the fourth book of Rices best-selling book series "The Vampire Chronicles." Lestat was first portrayed by Tom Cruise in 1994s Interview with the Vampire, which was made by Warner Bros. and directed by Neil Jordan. The movie starred Cruise, Brad Pitt, Christian Slater and Kirsten Dunst. In 2002, Warners released Queen of the Damned, a big-screen translation of the third book in the Rice series, which starred R&B singer Aaliyah. Lee Patterson, who wrote a well-regarded screenplay titled Snatched, is working on the Body Thief script. The hook of the Body Thief is that "the story concerns body-switching. Lestat, depressed and lonely after centuries as a vampire, decides to transfer souls for a day with a psychic, who after the transfer reveals that he has no intention of switching back. Lestat, now in a human body and with the help of some friends, must track the man down and get his body back." The project is not set up at a studio and is in development.

Johnny Depp and his producing partner Christi Dembrowski and their Infinitum Nihil production shingle have yet another interesting project in development. Deadline reports that theyve optioned film rights to the soon-to-be-published and as-yet-untitled book by Damien Echols which reveals his experiences on death row after his wrongful conviction and subsequent wrongful 18-year imprisonment for the 1993 murder of three 8-year-old boys in West Memphis, Arkansas. The memoir will be published in September 2012 by Blue Rider Press, an imprint of Penguin Books. The injustice of the West Memphis Three story drew badly needed support from the entertainment communitys Peter Jackson, Eddie Vedder, Natalie Maines, Henry Rollins, and of course Depp. The actor and his producing partner have long been wanting and waiting to explore this story and will develop the narrative as a feature film with Echols and his wife Lorri Davis, who will be executive producers. Their collective take is to spotlight the controversial conviction and imprisonment of the then 18-year-old whos now in his mid-30s and to present his life before conviction as well its twists and turns leading to release.

Even though the Academy Awards treat our genre like the bastard child of film, they're using Silence of the Lambs as a way of promoting the annual Oscars on February 26. They keep tricking us into watching, and it's always the most excruciatingly boring event filled with clouds of smug and self-congratulatory clapping. You did it guys! Below is a look at a teaser banner featuring Anthony Hopkins, wearing his nightmarish mask, in Silence of the Lambs, with the message: "We showed you how to be afraid." The film also starred Jodie Foster, and garnered five Oscars. Horror will one day return to glory.

300, Laid to Rest and "Game of Thrones" actress Lena Headey will play the lead in Gary Sinyor's new thriller The Unseen, from Ripple World Pictures and Magnet Films, reports Screen Daily. Headey, who is also set to appear in upcoming action Dredd, plays a grieving mother who starts to suffer attacks of blindness. Dominic Wright produces alongside Jacqueline Kerrin, with both attending the EFM to finalise funding. The script was developed at Magnet Films with executive producers David Frost and Michael Rosenberg and is set to shoot in late spring 2012 in the Balearics.

Anchor Bay Films announced today the acquisition of all North American distribution rights to director/writer Richard Bates, Jr.s debut feature film, Excision (review), which made its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival last month. Produced by Dylan Hale Lewis, the horror film features an all-star cast including: AnnaLynne McCord (90210), Traci Lords (Cry Baby), Ariel Winter (Modern Family), Roger Bart (Desperate Housewives), Jeremy Sumpter (Soul Surfer), Malcolm McDowell, Matthew Gray Gubler (Criminal Minds), Academy Award winner Marlee Matlin (Children of a Lesser God), Ray Wise (Good Night, and Good Luck) and John Waters. " 'Excision' is the story of Pauline (McCord), a delusional teenage outcast. Pauline picks scabs. Pauline dissects road kill. Pauline fantasizes about performing surgery on strangers. Her fascinations disturb her schoolmates and her parents, Phyllis (Lords) and Bob (Bart). No one understands Pauline except for Grace (Winter), her younger sister who suffers from cystic fibrosis. An outcast at school and at home, Pauline is convinced that the best way to repair her estranged relationship with her family is to perform a risky operation to save her sisters life." Ryan Daley had this to say in his review of the film: "Its like a Shakespearean tragedy without the Shakespeare. In the end, all of the subconscious craziness in 'Excision' is just an unnecessary afterthought tacked onto an insightful coming-of-age story." Keep up with all of our Sundance coverage here.

Bloody Disgusting got exclusive word that the Weinstein Company may actually get the long-gestured Kristy off the ground. We've been tipped off that Gary Fleder (Kiss the Girls, Don't Say a Word ) is now in the director's chair with a shoot date slated for this coming April. Penned by Tony Jaswinski, the slasher is being pegged as The Strangers on a college campus. It follows a college coed who stays in her dorm during Thanksgiving and is terrorized by four masked assailants on the empty campus -- the killers are up against far more than they bargained for. The Weinstein Company hopes to land Harry Potter star Emma Watson in the lead role of "Justine", although talks have yet to get underway. David Kirschner is producing with his David Kirschner Productions.

Twentieth Century Fox has released a slew of new imagery from Timur Bekmambetov's Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter 3D, his 3-D historical retelling arriving in theaters June 22. In this historical fantasy, produced by Tim Burton, vampires strike the same twitchy nerve among the citizenry that terrorists do in our real world. One of the images features Benjamin Walker as "Honest Abe" wielding an axe and taking full-swing (hopefully about to take a vamp's head off!) The other displays Lincoln in his younger days, already aware of the vampire menace, but just beginning to learn that he and his trusty felling axe could do something about it. Anthony Mackie, Dominic Cooper, Rufus Sewell, Robin McLeavy, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Jimmi Simpson, and Alan Tudyk also star. "Seth Grahame-Smith's revision of a Jane Austen classic explores the secret life of our greatest president, and the untold history that shaped our nation. As a young boy, Abraham Lincoln witnesses the shocking death of his mother, leading him on a path to an ongoing war - and ultimately to the presidency - he chronicles in a hidden diary. The journal reveals the incredible story of a clandestine warrior who never stopped fighting for the country he led and the people he loved."

The official Sony Pictures Animation Facebook has shared another behind-the-scenes look at Genndy Tartakovsky's Hotel Transylvania 3D, this time showing pencil work for The Mummy, who will be voiced by the super annoying Cee Lo Green. In theaters September 21, "Welcome to the Hotel Transylvania, Dracula's (Adam Sandler) lavish five-stake resort, where monsters and their families can live it up, free from meddling from the human world. But here's a little known fact about Dracula: he is not only the Prince of Darkness; he is also a dad. Over-protective of his teenage daughter, Mavis, Dracula fabricates tales of elaborate dangers to dissuade her adventurous spirit. As a haven for Mavis, he opens the Hotel Transylvania, where his daughter and some of the world's most famous monsters Frankenstein and his bride, the Mummy, the Invisible Man, a family of werewolves, and more can kick back in safety and peace. For Drac, catering to all of these legendary monsters is no problem but his world could come crashing down when one ordinary guy stumbles on the hotel and takes a shine to Mavis." Miley Cyrus, Kevin James, Fran Drescher, David Spade, David Koechner, Steve Buscemi, and Molly Shannon also star.

They almost come in threes... (thank God) Just the other day we lost the original Romero zombie, Bill Hinzman, while this morning we woke up to see that Morgan Jones, a character actor in TV and film, died in Tarzana, Calif., on Jan. 13. He was 84. Jones amassed more than 170 television credits, appearing as a series regular in "The Blue Angels" in the early 1960s, "The Twilight Zone" and recurring on Broderick Crawford series "Highway Patrol." The actor also appeared in more than 25 feature films, including The Giant Claw, Forbidden Planet and the 1957 cult classic Not of This Earth. In other news, acclaimed horror author/artist/director Clive Barker survived a near-death experience having just awoken from a seven-day-long coma. 15 Days ago Barker hit Twitter with the following message: "Dear Friends, I've had some medical issues that have recently forced me away from my beloved desk and into the hospital..." He then vanished for over a week returning to explain that he received "Toxic Shock" from a visit to the dentist that put him into a coma. "In my case the dental work unloaded such a spillage of poisonous bacteria into my blood that my whole system crashed, putting me into a coma. I spent several days in Intensive Care, with a machine breathing for me," said the relieved artist. "Later, my Doctors said that they had not anticipated a happy ending until I started to fight, repeatedly pulling out the tubes that I was constantly gagging on. After a few days of nightmarish delusions I woke up to my life again, tired, twenty pounds lighter but happy to be back from a very dark place." He later added, "I've played down just how close to dying I was, but in truth I was very close." I can only imagine what horrible nightmares he had over the course of a week. But we're thankful that the 60-year-old auteur pulled through to bring us more horrific visions in the coming years. Get well soon!

New Line and director James Wan (Saw, Dead Silence, Insidious) are tapping the Twilight and Dark Knight franchises for youngsters to star in horror pic The Warren Files, signing up Mackenzie Foy and Joey King to play members of the true-life Perron family, reports Variety. The Perrons claimed they "lived among the dead" in the 1970s as spirits -- both friendly and sinister -- inhabited their Rhode Island farmhouse. Vera Farmiga and Patrick Wilson are playing the investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren. Lilli Taylor and Ron Livingston will portray the Perrons. Both child thesps appear in highly anticipated franchise finales coming this year: Foy will play the half-vampire offspring Renesmee Cullen in The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn -- Part 2. King has a small part in The Dark Knight Rises. Peter Safran and Tony DeRosa-Grund will produce "The Warren Files" -- formerly titled The Conjuring -- through the Safran Co. and DeRosa-Grund's Evergreen Media Group. Wan is directing from a script by Chad and Carey Hayes with shooting scheduled to start February 21 in North Carolina.

Son of Terror director Antony DeGennaro is back with a new indie production, Sisterhood of Death, which stars Larry Laverty, Dolores Rogers, Ashley Morrison and Ricco DiStefano. "The film follows Franky, the prowling tom cat, and Jessica, Franky's dream girl, in a story of lust and deception, it's a twisted look at what men and women think about each other out there on the streets of life." Check out the first still above and art below. Weeew that's fugly.

From Frontier(s) director Xavier Gens comes the new post-apocalyptic thriller, The Divide (review), which blasts onto DVD and Blu-ray April 17. Specs and art forthcoming. In this graphic and violent, post-apocalyptic thriller starring Michael Biehn, Milo Ventimiglia, Rosanna Arquette, Courtney B. Vance and Lauren German, "nine strangersall tenants of a New York high rise apartmentescape a nuclear attack by hiding out in the buildings bunker-like basement. Trapped for days underground with no hope for rescue, and only unspeakable horrors awaiting them on the other side of the bunker door, the group begins to descend into madness, each turning on one another with physical and psycho-sexual torment. As supplies dwindle, and tensions flare, and they grow increasingly unhinged by their close quarters and hopelessness, each act against one another becomes more depraved than the next. While everyone in the bunker allows themselves to be overcome by desperation and lose their humanity, one survivor holds onto a thin chance for escape even with no promise of salvation on the outside."

Vision Films recently renamed their crappy werewolf movie 13 Hrs to Night Wolf. It will arrive on DVD April 24 from Lionsgate Home Entertainment. Directed by Jonathan Glendening and starring Tom Felton, Gemma Atkinson, Isabella Calthorpe, check out the art inside.. "A full moon hangs in the night sky and lightning streaks across dark storm clouds. Sarah Tyler returns to her troubled family home in the isolated countryside, for a much put-off visit. As the storm rages on, Sarah, her family and friends shore up for the night, cut off from the outside world. But something comes out of the driving rain and darkness. Something that holds a dark secret so devastating that, in one night, it could wipe out the entire family. Trapped, Sarah and her brothers and friends must use their heads as well as their physical strength to survive not only the thing that is hunting them down one by one - but their own entrapment as the besieged group turns in on itself. Can they survive the horror stalking them? Or is their enemy already amongst them and has it always been? Can they survive for 13 hours?"

"This time, they fucked with the wrong Mexican!" (Again!) With Berlin just kicking off, it was announced that Robert Rodriguez is teaming with producer Alexander Rodnyansky to hatch a sequel to the 2010 action film Machete, reports Deadline. Titled Machete Kills (as teased in the closing credits of the first Machete), the film is the second in a planned trilogy. Danny Trejo returns as the title character. Ethan Maniquis co-directed the first film that starred Trejo as Machete is a Mexican, an ex-Federale with a gift for wielding a blade, who hides out as a day laborer, and is double-crossed by a corrupt state senator. The film will be the first U.S. picture to be produced and financed by Alexander Rodnyansky, whose Hollywood expansion plans include a $120 million film fund with Media Talent Groups Geyer Kosinski. AR Films U.S. is a new partnership between AR Films and Aldamisa Entertainment, whose Sergei Bespalov will manage worldwide sales of Machete Kills in Berlin.

Adam Green's (Hatchet, Hatchet II, Frozen) long-time dream project comes to life with horror pal Joe Lynch (Knights of Badassdom, Wrong Turn 2) when their horror sitcom "Holliston" premieres on FEARnet television Tuesday, April 3rd, 2012, at 10:30 p.m. ET. While horror fans have heard quite a bit about the project, FEARnet has premiered the first trailer that we've embedded below. "Holliston" is a riotous and offbeat multi-camera, buddy comedy set in the town of Holliston (near Boston). Described by its creators as ""The Big Bang Theory" meets Evil Dead II," the series shines a light on the post-college life where everything is a struggle, and nothing works out like it's supposed to, with terrifyingly funny results as Adam and Joe struggle to become big-time horror filmmakers and make ends meet. "Holliston" stars Green and Lynch along with Corri English (Unrest, The Bedford Diaries, lead singer of Brokedown Cadillac), Laura Ortiz (The Hills Have Eyes, Horton Hears A Who), Dee Snider ("Celebrity Apprentice", Twisted Sister, Strangeland, radio/television personality), and Oderus Urungus (Alien lead singer from legendary heavy metal band GWAR). The regular cast will welcome a bevy of guest stars and celebrity cameos during its first season. Upcoming guest appearances include: Colton Dunn (Hatchet II, "Parks and Recreation"), Danielle Harris (Halloween 4 and 5), Kane Hodder (Friday the 13th Parts VII and VIII, Hatchet), John Landis (An American Werewolf in London, Animal House), Derek Mears (Friday the 13th), Bill Moseley (The Devils Rejects), Brian Posehn ("The Sarah Silverman Show"), Parry Shen (Hatchet, Better Luck Tomorrow), Tony Todd (Candyman, Hatchet), Ray Wise (Chillerama, "Reaper").

BooBoo Stewart - Seth Clearwater in Taylor Lautner's Wolf Pack in the Twilight franchise - has landed a role in House of the Damned 3D, reports Market Saw. Penned by Sebastian Locke and Joe Knetter, "Five friends band together to save the historic part of their town and inadvertently become targets of a serial killer after uncovering the truth behind a series of grisly murders that went unsolved... until now!" Producers Michael George, David Forbes, Ethan Terra, Nick Smith, and John Sweeney are currently locking cast and in talks with the legendary Japanese director Takashi Miike. Filming is set to begin late March in Baton Rouge and Clinton, Louisiana.

FilmDistrict (Insidious) has taken an equity stake in WER, a horror film that is directed by The Devil Inside helmer William Brent Bell that is expected to be one of the hot titles at Berlin later this week, says Deadline. Bell wrote the script with Matthew Peterman, with whom he scripted The Devil Inside, a sleeper low budget horror film which has grossed $53 million domestic for Paramount. As we continue to be the only site to exclusively break the plot, the found footage pic takes place in police station with the suspect turning into a werewolf. Shooting begins April 9. FilmDistrict could end up as the film's domestic distributor. WER will bring a filmmaking style similar to The Devil Inside, but apply it to a different horror mythology they are keeping under wraps. Steven Schneider, Matthew Peterman and Morris Paulson will produce. Bell, Peterman and Paulson partner in the production company Prototype.

The long awaited new Don Coscarelli movie John Dies at the End (review) premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in the Park City at Midnight category. In the adaptation from the director of Phantasm and Bubba Ho-Tep, "It's a drug that promises an out-of-body experience with each hit. On the street they call it Soy Sauce, and users drift across time and dimensions. But some who come back are no longer human. Suddenly a silent otherworldly invasion is underway, and mankind needs a hero. What it gets instead is John and David, a pair of college dropouts who can barely hold down jobs. Can these two stop the oncoming horror in time to save humanity? No. No, they can't." This film had a little help from Hollywood A-lister Paul Giamatti, who produced and plays a role in the film. He wanted to work with Coscarelli on Bubba Nosferatu, the aborted Bubba Ho-Tep sequel, so offered his services when Coscarelli read the David Wong book John Dies at the End.

With EFM in Berlin kicking off, there's all sorts of goodies for Kimble Rendall's shark thriller Bait 3D to sort through. qWith a rough sales trailer embedded below, you'll find two batch of behind-the-scenes images and stories accompanying them both here and here. "In a sleepy coastal resort community, shoppers at an underground supermarket find themselves terrorized by a crazed bandit when the unimaginable occurs… A monstrous freak tsunami swallows the town. Now trapped inside a flooded supermarket with an armed maniac and rushing water threatening to entomb them all in a watery grave, the imprisoned band of survivors discover theyre not alone. The tsunami has brought some unwanted visitors from the depths. As the waters rise they must overcome not only the threat of drowning, but another threat, just as deadly and far more bloodthirsty… Packs of hungry tiger sharks." Xavier Samuel, Julian McMahon, Sharni Vinson, Phoebe Tonkin, Martin Sacks, Alice Parkinson, Alexander Russell, Qi Yuwu, Adrian Pang, Lincoln Lewis, and Damien Garvey all star.

While they're looking for financing to finish up the project, the filmmakers behind Zombie Resurrection at least got the project shot. Above you'll find the trailer for the zombie flick described as a darkly humorous zombie flick set 15 months after the zombie apocalypse. "Zombie Resurrection isn't like other low-budget zombie movies. It has all the gore, screams and jumps you'd expect from a horror movie, but it has so much more besides... it expands the zombie mythos; it has a cast of eccentric characters that you really don't want to see end up getting eaten (with some note-perfect performances from a terrific cast); it's funny as hell in places, deeply scary in others; and it has the social commentary that makes Romero's zombie films so much better than all the rest." Written and directed by both Andy Phelps and Jake Hawkins, you'll find the super lengthy synopsis below.