John Carpenter to Direct Randy Queen’s ‘Darkchylde’ [NSFW Video]

It was announced Monday that venerable horror filmmaker John Carpenter's next project is to be a live-action adaptation of Darkchylde, based on the comic book by writer/artist Randy Queen. The story of a variously undressed teenage girl who transforms into the monsters she sees in her nightmares and "acts out her deepest, darkest impulses," Darkchylde was perhaps the most successful of the independent T&A comics glut of the 1990s. The project would seem to be a natural fit for Carpenter, whose work includes The Thing and Halloween, the latter of which also depicted a teenage girl in a horrifying adventure.

Test footage after the jump!

John Carpenter says, "Randy Queen's hijacked angel, Ariel Chylde, is the best young female character since Laurie Strode in Halloween. Bringing Ariel and her dark mysteries to life should be quite an adventure for us all."

Progress on the Darkchylde film was expedited following the release of test footage created by Weta Workshop, the Academy Award-winning New Zealand-based visual effects studio behind The Lord of the Rings. As you can see in the clip below, the end result is very much in the idiom of John Carpenter and Queen's original work.

WARNING: The video is not safe for work.

Randy Queen:

"I'm beyond thrilled that John Carpenter, one of our most important, and legendary genre directors, and the man responsible for such landmark films as THE THING, and HALLOWEEN has come onboard with Weta Workshop to help bring the nightmarish tale of Ariel Chylde to the silver screen. As a horror fan, the thought of Carpenter and Weta together, beautiful dreamscapes, and multiple transformations, makes me incredibly excited. There is a reason nearly his entire catalogue has, or is being remade, and it's because Carpenter is a genius."

It's always heartening to see a high profile filmmaker attached to independent comic book material -- especially, of course, when it's someone as accomplished as John Carpenter, who seems to have a genuine affection for Queen's work.

Darkchylde, Volume 1: Legacy and Redemption, a new printing of Queen's original Darkchylde comics, is solicited for a January 2011 release from Image Comics.