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As Rogue Pictures prepares to release Neil Marshall's "Doomsday" on Friday, the Focus Features genre arm has made a deal for the writer-director's follow-up, "Sacrilege," a horror film to be set in the Old West.

Marshall pitched the project to Rogue topper Andrew Rona, and he will write and direct it.

"It is set during the Gold Rush, a time remembered for incidents like the Donner Party," Marshall said. "It is meant to be a pitch-black, gritty, period horror movie."

Marshall, who wrote and directed "Dog Soldiers" and "The Descent" as well as "Doomsday," grew up in England watching oaters and horror films in equal measure and dreamed of combining the genres. Marshall declined to disclose much detail on "Sacrilege," but the picture will draw on themes of isolation and paranoia and such influences as John Carpenter's "The Thing."

"This is 'Unforgiven' by way of H.P. Lovecraft, with that grim, gritty setting and a horror element nobody has seen before," Marshall said.

He added that he'd begin writing immediately.

"I've always got a few irons in the fire, but this has long been an ambition of mine," Marshall said.