Game of Thrones showrunners to tackle Lovecraft horror-verse in ‘Cthulhu mythos’ movie

They may have warped away from the Star Wars movie-verse, but Game of Thrones TV creators David Benioff and D.B. Weiss are about to plunge themselves into a spookier, more spectral big-screen project.

Deadline reports that the duo have just signed on to produce a new film for Warner Bros. inspired by the shudder-inducing works of horror master H.P. Lovecraft, based on Vertigo's graphic novel Lovecraft from Hans Rodionoff, Keith Giffen, and Enrique Breccia.

Details on the untitled movie are light, but the report speculates that it may turn on an intriguing what-if twist — as in, what if Lovecraft’s mythic tales of sinister eldritch beasts and primordial evil spirits were never meant to be fiction? Or as the synopsis for the graphic novel asks: “What if the imaginary terrors that Lovecraft wrote about were not imaginary at all? What if the monsters he created are real?”

There's no early word on who might direct the film. The only other information about the project for now posits that it may be set “in 1920 within the Cthulhu mythos.”

Along to script the new film are Aeon Flux scribes Phil Hay & Matt Manfredi, a team whose previous credits also include Ride Along, The Invitation, and Destroyer. Karyn Kusama, who directed the latter two movies, will also reportedly serve as an executive producer on the Lovecraft project.

Benioff and Weiss recently announced they were stepping away from their much-buzzed planned Star Wars movie trilogy, an undertaking they’d originally boarded as the most ambitious of their post-Game of Thrones projects. The pair are still committed to their mammoth Netflix deal, which makes the red-letter streaming giant their new, post-HBO television home.

The overall creative deal with Netflix, valued at somewhere north of $200 million, gives Netflix exclusive access to a bevy of forthcoming series and feature-length projects overseen by the Emmy-winning creative duo — but WB's Lovecraft film project reportedly predates Benioff and Weiss’ arrangement with Netflix by several years. 

There's no early word on a release date for the Lovecraft movie, so we'll be keeping a frightful vigil as we await more news.