Fresh off of Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, director André Øvredal is cracking open an old creaky coffin that's been gathering dust in Hollywood for years. THR reports that Øvredal is set to take on Last Voyage of the Demeter, a high seas vampire thriller—underappreciated genre IMHO—that has floated from company to company over the years before recently finding port at Amblin Partners. (For context: The last time the project surfaced, Neil Marshall was offering Viggo Mortensen the lead role in 2012.)

Written in 2001 by Bragi Schut (Escape Room), the film follows the ship called "Demeter" that ferried history's most famous vampire from Transylvania to London in Bram Stoker's Dracula. In the novel, the "Demeter" arrives destroyed and carrying one insane survivor, and Last Voyage tells the story of all the batty madness that goes down to bring it to that point.

Øvredal is a fantastic candidate for what sounds like a tense, one-location thriller that plays with setting and paranoia. Before Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, the Norwegian filmmaker helmed The Autopsy of Jane Doe, a tense, locked-room horror flick that saw Brian Cox and Emile Hirsch trying to survive a night in a morgue with a possibly-possessed corpse. Based on the concept, Last Voyage of the Demeter is basically the same idea but with the added bonus of vampirism and seasickness. Also, if Øvredal wants to just go ahead and cast Brian Cox as Dracula I'm not going to sit here and complain.

The report notes that Last Voyage of the Demeter is likely to be the director's second project after he tackles The Long Walk, an adaptation of Stephen King's 1979 dystopian novel that's been set up at New Line.