Ron Howard may be ready to turn his back on relegion and move into the completely different territory of the religion of H.P. Lovecraft! 

According to Variety, Howard is teaming with Universal and Imagine Entertainment to unleash The Strange Adventures of H.P. Lovecraft, a big screen adaptation of the Image Comics graphic novel which hits the stands April 6th.

Universal are wishing to broaden their horror grasp and see this Lovecraft mythology as being easier to make at this point, rather than resurrecting Dracula, Frankenstein and wheeling out another Mummy movie. Though you have to believe more movies with those characters will come eventually. 

Created by Mac Carter and Jeff Blitz, book borrows elements from Lovecraft’s life, such as his family’s struggle with mental illness and his own bouts with writer’s block, and transforms the young writer’s darkest nightmares into reality when he comes across a book that puts a curse on him and lets the evils he conjures up loose on the world.

Carter himself is writing the screenplay for Howard, who is interested but hasn’t firmly committed to direct just yet. It’s one of those, wait and see until the script comes in situations. 

So it’s kind of a biopic of Lovecraft, and kind of not at the same time. It’s great that we are going to be treated to Lovecraftian sized monsters finally on the big screen, something that Ray bemoaned the absence of in a great article yesterday at his blog and although it’s not quite as cool as seeing one of his penned novels come to the big screen and neither is it a director I ever thought would be interested in this kind of thing… you can give me this over another Dan Brown adaptation anyday.