Masters of Horror Coming To Showtime! Argento! Carpenter! Coscarelli! Dante! Corman! Hooper! R

This has got to be just about the biggest piece of news to hit horror circles in a good while ... By now most fans of the genre should be aware of the Masters of Horror, an informal circle of film makers who meet bi-monthly for dinner to shoot the breeze about their chosen genre. Well, Showtime has just commissioned a thirteen part series from the group with the shows made up of single hour films from many of the key directors. You want new Argento? It'll be here. Same with Romero, Tobe Hooper, John Carpenter and a slew of others. The most exciting news for me was that Don Coscarelli's entry will be based on a short story by Joe Lansdale, the author of Bubba Ho Tep. Sweet! Here are the relevant bits from the Variety report:

"Spurred by the recent string of box-office horror hits, Showtime has nabbed rights to "Masters of Horror," a series of 13 hourlong films to be helmed and/or written by the genre's top names. IDT Entertainment's New Arc unit, Industry Entertainment and Nice Guy Prods. are producing "Masters," the idea for which sprung from a bimonthly dinner attended by several of the participating directors ... Dario Argento, John Carpenter, Larry Cohen, Roger Corman, Don Coscarelli, Joe Dante, Mick Garris, Stuart Gordon, John Landis, Tobe Hooper and George Romero are slated to direct installments ... Showtime will shell out more money than some of the B-movie auteurs are used to getting, according to Greenblatt. He says the budget per film will be comparable to the per-episode cost of a first-season scripted drama --typically $1 million-$2 million ... As for the individual films, helmers will produce new projects and adaptations as well as retellings of classics. Among them are "Deer Woman," which Landis co-wrote with his son Max; "Jenifer," to be directed by Argento based on the comicbook by Bruce Jones and Bernie Wrightson and adapted by and starring Steven Weber; "Incident on and off a Mountain Road," adapted and directed by Coscarelli and Stephen Romano from Joe Lansdale's short story; and "Chocolate," which Garris will direct based on his own short story."