I’d say for every person that loves Rob Zombie’s films, there’s one who absolutely hates his works. For better or worse, the shock-rocker-turned-director is a big name in horror, and I’d dare you to name 5 more modern day genre directors that pique your interest as much as he does.

Zombie, who helmed House of 1,000 Corpses, The Devil’s Rejects and the previous two Halloween films, is developing The Lords of Salem for Haunted Pictures (the team behind Paranormal Activity), while also keeping Tyrannosaurus Rex in the cards. Fortunately, he’s decided against remaking The Blob. Inside you can see the latest on all things Zombie.
What we’ve learned is that Lords of Salem takes place in contemporary Salem, where the inhabitants receive a demonic visit from a 300-year old coven of witches. Apparently, the story follows a DJ in Salem who unleashes a horde of demonic minions after she plays a cursed record. Zombie tells Empire a bit more:

“Inspired by the Salem witch trials, the film won’t be a period piece, but will sport a prologue set in 1692. “There were twenty people that everyone knows about – obviously all innocent – executed as witches in Salem,” explains Rob. “The basic premise of the film is that there were a further four who actually were witches, who were killed secretly, and vowed one day to return to wreak havoc on Salem’s descendants. That’s when the movie jumps ahead to the present day and things start to go wrong…” ”

“Lords of Salem is probably the bleakest of all my films,” Rob adds. “It’s only gonna get worse!”

Shooting starts, if all goes to plan, on April 18th, as soon as he gets home from the tour.

Speaking on the two aforementioned films, Zombie still hopes to make Tyrannosaurus Rex, but has backed out of directing The Blob: “I didn’t want to do another remake,” he tells Empire. “You just can’t win. If it’s too similar to the original, everybody wonders what the point was, but if it’s too different, everybody complains that it’s… too different! I found especially with Halloween II that everyone talked about what it wasn’t and not what it was: ‘you can’t do that with Michael Myers; you can’t do that with Loomis…’ It’s like people have a set of rules in their minds about how these things should function, and you can’t work like that.” Smart man.