It’s been a long time since we’ve seen something new on the big screen from legendary horror director John Carpenter. Ghosts of Mars was his last theatrical release, and that was all the way back in 2001. Since then he has taken a long hiatus, for the most part content to simply cash cheques while other people remade his films. He did do a couple episodes for the Masters of Horror series on Showtime though, which may have shaken loose the cobwebs and inspired him to get back behind the camera.

His next movie, currently in pre-production, will be Scared Straight starring Nicolas Cage. Aside from that, though, we’ve heard about all kinds of other possibilities on the horizon including a flick called L.A. Gothic, a graphic novel adaptation written by Steve Niles, and the long-rumoured Escape From Earth. Now we’ve got details about yet another movie in development by J.C. that is essentially “Unforgiven as a gangster movie”.

According to CHUD, Jeremy Passmore, co-writer/co-director of Special starring Michael Rapaport, has written a script for John Carpenter called The Prince (no relation to John Carpenter’s Prince of Darkness). It’s a crime movie about a former gangster in Las Vegas who is trying to lead a straight life, raising his daughter on his own. When she goes missing however, the trail leads back to his past life, and an ending that is “brutal and violent and dark”.

It sounds like this is probably just one of many projects on Carpenter’s plate, and may not even get made, but I do find it interesting that it’s another non-horror film. The mention of Unforgiven as an influence is pretty intriguing as well, since we all know that John Carpenter loves his westerns. Maybe he’s decided to leave the horror genre to the young, up and coming filmmakers, and stake out some new territory instead?