Though you would think he’d have had his fill of darkness and magic after years bringing Harry Potter to life and, more recently, appearing in The Woman In Black, Daniel Radcliffe seems happy to stay with the occult. Red Granite and Mandalay Pictures have announced that he’s scored the lead role in Horns.

Radcliffe will be replacing Shia LaBeouf in the dark fantasy, adapted from Joe Hill’s novel. And alongside Radcliffe, Piranha 3D's Alexandre Aja has signed on to direct the movie.

Horns’ plot follows Ig Perrish, the prime suspect for the violent rape and murder of his girlfriend. Hung-over from a night of hard drinking, Ig awakens one morning to find horns starting to grow from his own head and soon realizes their power drives people to confess their sins and give in to their most selfish and unspeakable impulses – an effective tool in his quest to discover the true circumstances of his late girlfriend’s tragedy and to exact revenge on her killer.

Aja is busy casting the other roles and wants to be ready to shoot in the autumn, particularly since he seems fond of the story. “After reading Joe Hill's cult book, I couldn't resist temptation to dive into the devilish underworld and reinvent a universal myth. Horns is a wild ride of sin and crime, with a love story in its heart.”

This does seem like the right blend of filmmaker, actor and source material, and now we just have to hope the ol’ alchemy happens to create a great movie.