Hideo Nakata, the scariest man in Japan, is back to his usual spooky, pant-wetting tricks with the news that he's to direct Voice From the Stone, a supernatural thriller based on an Italian cult classic novel.

The plot involves a female psychologist as she starts a case concerning a boy who won't speak - supposedly because of a promise he made to his recently deceased mother not to utter a word until 'her spirit returns'.

We're not sure what that means or how exactly your spirit might return (Self-addressed coffin? Shaped as boomerang?)  but it has something to do with the psychologist being inhabited by the mother's ghost, someway, somehow.

We'll have to find out once the film's released, or buy the novel it was originally based on, which was written for the screen by Mark Wheaton, writer of Friday The 13th and The Messengers. It will be produced by the man behind Reign Of Fire and Road To Perdition, Dean Zanuc. 

Filming will begin next spring, or summer. They'll make their minds up about that at some point.