British director Neil Marshall was catapulted to fame after the worldwide success of his horror movie The Descent, and this weekend he will return to theatres with a new movie called Doomsday. Although a lot of people seem a bit put off by the fact that he decided to do a post-apocalyptic flick in the vein of Mad Max and Escape From New York, I am pretty stoked and looking forward to seeing it. But it appears that preparation for Marshall’s next movie is already underway, and it finds him jumping genres yet again… sort of.

According to Variety, Rogue Pictures have made a deal for his next project, which is called Sacrilege and is described as a cross between a western and a horror movie. “It is set during the Gold Rush, a time remembered for incidents like the Donner Party… It is meant to be a pitch-black, gritty, period horror movie. This is Unforgiven by way of H.P. Lovecraft, with that grim, gritty setting and a horror element nobody has seen before.”

Marshall certainly isn’t the first guy to combine westerns with horror, and in fact he acknowledges John Carpenter’s The Thing as an influence on the film. However, westerns have been making a resurgence as of late, and Sacrilege seems poised to ride the wave started by movies like The Proposition, 3:10 to Yuma and The Assassination of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford. Personally I think this sounds like an intriguing concept and I can’t wait to hear more. In the meantime, I’ll definitely be in a theatre sometime this weekend, ready to soak up Doomsday.