In October 2009, Mandalay Pictures picked up the screen rights to Joe Hill's novel Horns.  The book centers on "a 26-year-old man who wakes up with a massive hangover and discovers horns sprouting from his head. He becomes convinced that their existence is tied to the unsolved murder of his girlfriend."  That would also be my logical conclusion from sprouting horns on my head.  The movie has been churning through development hell ever since, but today Heat Vision reports that Piranha 3D director Alexandre Aja will helm the adaptation.  Keith Bunin wrote the screenplay and Mandalay is in the process of packaging the movie in order to secure financing.  We reported back in March that Shia LaBeouf was set to star, but Heat Vision makes no mention of him in their story so presumably he's dropped out.The plan is to have Aja direct Horns in late spring-early summer 2012 before he moves on to adapt the manga Cobra the Space Pirate.  Hit the jump for the synopsis of Joe Hill's novel.horns-book-cover-02Here's the synopsis for Joe Hill's Horns:

“Ignatius Martin Perrish spent the night drunk and doing terrible things. He woke the next morning with a headache, put his hands to his temples and felt something unfamiliar, a pair of knobby, pointed protuberances. He was so ill-wet-eyed and weak-he didn’t think anything of it at first, was too hung-over for thinking or worry. But when he was swaying over the toilet, he glanced at himself in the mirror above the sink and saw he had grown horns while he slept.

The second son of a renowned musician and doting mother, Ig Perrish has a privileged life and expectations of a bright future with his childhood sweetheart, Merrin Williams. But life takes an unexpected dark turn when Merrin is brutally killed and suspicion falls hard on Ig.

A year passes, but Ig is nowhere near over his grief or his rage . . . feelings that come to a head in a lost evening of alcohol and hate. When he wakes the next morning he discovers that he has undergone a surreal transformation, and is in possession of an incredible power. It isn’t long before he turns his terrible new abilities towards vengeance. Unfortunately Ig is about to learn that when it comes to revenge, the devil is in the details."