Since coming back from the dead, Hammer Films has been involved in movies ranging from the cheap and less than cheerful (Beyond The Rave), to the dark and intriguing (Let Me In, The Woman In Black), and now they’re going a little bit steampunk, as it’s been announced they’ve acquired the rights to the novel Boneshaker by Cherie Priest for adaptation to the big screen. The film will be co-produced by Hammer and Cross Creek Pictures.

John Hilary Shepherd is writing the screenplay, which incorporates futuristic innovations into a Victorian setting. Priest’s novel is set in an alternate version of 1880s Seattle, where the city has been walled in and a toxic gas has turned many of its remaining residents into ‘Rotters,’ more commonly known as zombies. A young widow hunts for her teen son in the Seattle underworld, while dealing with airship pirates, a criminal overlord and heavily armed refugees.

Boneshaker was nominated for a 2010 Hugo Award for Best Novel, and won the 2010 Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel. The novel, published in 2009 by Tor Books, is the first in a series set in the same Civil War-period, alternate-world that Priest has dubbed ‘The Clockwork Century’. So if the first film does well, there’s plenty of room for a franchise.

General movie news courtesy of Movie Muser