Another Horror Project for David Slade: Cold Skin

David Slade being announced as the director of the third “Twilight” movie, “Eclipse” is an intriguing prospect. What exactly will he bring to what amounts to a teenage-vampire franchise? It’s gonna be fun to find out. In the meantime, Slade has already attached himself to another horror title, and this one sounds even more up his alley. The film is called “Cold Skin”, an Antarctic island-set horror/psychological thriller based on a Spanish novel of the same name by Albert Sanchez Pinol.

Slade tells Variety:

“With ‘Cold Skin,’ I believe we can create a lasting psycho-physiological horror film. It is one of the most atmospheric, terrifying, cinematic and original stories of the human spirit.”

Here’s a description of the Spanish novel from Amazon.com (POSSIBLE SPOILERS):

In this grim, H.G. Wellsian fable, an unnamed European of unspecified nationality is hired to spend an unspecified mid-20th-century year logging wind conditions on a tiny Antarctic island. Anticipating solitude, the bookish young man soon discovers that he has a neighbor—the pathologically reclusive Gruner—and that each night, the island is overrun by humanoid killer amphibians. He and brutish Gruner—who has tamed a “toad” of his own—join forces, killing monsters by night and fornicating with Gruner’s pet by day. Inspired by the creature’s ability to laugh and cry—to say nothing of her perky breasts, knack for housework and wordless submissiveness—the narrator begins to think of the cold-blooded creatures as human. When he tries to befriend them and their children, his efforts pacify the humanoids, but not Gruner; the hopeful idyll ends when the older man launches a last suicidal effort to exterminate the “monsters.” Gruner’s death plunges our hero into a rut of battle, drunkenness and bestiality so complete that when his replacement arrives, he has become as feral as Gruner was before him. Sentence by elegant sentence, Piñol’s first novel offers a tightly crafted allegory of human brutality both fascinating and repellent.

Wow.

The script is currently being written by Jesus Olmo, who co-wrote “28 Weeks Later”. “Cold Skin” is expected to start shooting as soon as Slade wraps “Eclipse” around March 2010 with a budget of $25 million.