The next directorial project on the horizon for Rob Zombie is The Lords of Salem, which he’ll write and direct in conjunction with producers of the hit Paranormal Activity.
“They came to me and wanted to work together,” Zombie told Billboard.com. “I didn’t even have an idea at the time. They were like, ‘If you want to make a movie, if you have an idea we will give you complete control over casting, the script, the final cut of the picture — everything. You never heard that. Nobody hears that. Everything’s a battle, but these guys were like, ‘That’ll be our deal with you.’ And I was like, ‘Great!’”
The Lords of Salem is a thriller set in contemporary Salem (Massachusetts) where the inhabitants receive a demonic visit from those witches who were executed in the 17th and 18th centuries. The film is drawn from an idea Zombie had some years back.
“I grew up in Massachusetts,” Zombie says, “so the Salem witch trials and all that was always very prevalent. Even when I was a little kid, you take a school field trip and go to Salem to the witch museums and watch re-enactments of the witch trials. I always found it fascinating, so I started writing an idea about … this group of five witches that were killed back then and have come back to modern-day Salem to seek revenge.”
Zombie is just starting to work on The Lords of Salem script and expects to be in production in late March or early April 2011. He also hopes to involve his current band in the film’s soundtrack. “I’ve been thinking about the music in this movie early, early on,” he says. “We’ll probably do the score this time out — not rock music, but a score. I know I want music to play a large role.”
