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Not long ago, Rob Zombie said that he’d soon be announcing his next directorial project.

And now the info is out. It isn’t the remake of The Blob, nor Tyrannosaurus Rex.

Stoke up the fire and put the cauldron on to boil, kids: Rob Zombie’s back and this time he’s tackling witches. Thanks to some cash backing from Paranormal Activity’s Jason Blum, Steven Schneider and Oren Peli via their Haunted Films company, he’s turning a long-gestating script called The Lords of Salem into his next film.

The horror thriller will take place in modern-day Salem, Massachusetts, famous – or should that be infamous – for the witch trials that took place in the 17th century. That history comes back into play when a 300-year old coven of witches starts causing trouble for the inhabitants. The film will be a thriller, “set in contemporary Salem, where the inhabitants receive a demonic visit from a 300-year old coven of witches.”

Zombie has apparently been noodling with the concept for a few years, but put it aside to work on other things. Now, though, he’s shoved it front and centre and will write a shooting draft while he’s out on tour this year, to kick off shooting in 2011. He seems especially glad at the deal Haunted Films offered him, which could best be described as carte blanche. “What excited me most was Jason saying, 'you can have total control over the script, casting and final cut,'” Zombie tells Deadline. “I said I’m in.”

Zombie says his best filmmaking experience to date has been with LionsGate on The Devil’s Rejects, and that Rejects is his best film. He says the battles on the two Halloween movies were draining. (”By the time I got [my way], I didn’t care anymore.”)

Speaking to Deadline, Zombie also name-drops The Shining as an example of a slow-burn film that might not get made by a studio now, which suggests that he might go for a longer, more deliberately paced film while making The Lords of Salem.

But what of The Blob, which he announced he’d be remaking a year ago? For those of you that don’t know, the director announced last year that he had plans to remake the 1958 Steve McQueen classic with a budget akin to Cloverfield and District 9. Not much was known about what his take on the film was going to be like, but he did say that he had plans to change the design of the blob itself.

We have good news for those who disliked his Halloween movies and bad news for fans... Zombie’s happy to stay with something original, and is ditching all his specially bought jelly moulds. “I wanted to break away from anything related to pre-existing material,” he says. “The remake train is getting pretty tired now and when I made Halloween, everybody complained, either that it was too much like the original or too different. I like that people either love or hate what I do because it’s better than being in the middle, which means forgettable. But when you do an original premise, they take it on face value and after three years of not being able to win on Halloween, I just couldn't go through that again.”