StudioCanal is to co-finance and handle international sales on Mucho Mojo, a comic thriller to be directed by David S Goyer, who made his directorial debut with ZigZag and has script credits including Blade, Blade 2, Crow: City Of Angels, Ghost Rider and Dark City.

The film is a co-production between Goyer's Phantom Four Films and Rat Entertainment and is scheduled to begin pre-production later in the summer, with a subsequent shoot in east Texas. Oscar-winning screenwriter Ted Tally (The Silence Of The Lambs) has written the screenplay from the novel by Joe R Lansdale. Tally, who also adapted Thomas Harris' Red Dragon for Universal Pictures, will executive produce alongside his Red Dragon director Brett Ratner.

Phantom Four president Pascale Faubert, who brought the film to StudioCanal, will produce alongside Jay Stern and Cindy Guidry of Rat.

Mucho Mojo is the story of two friends who are left to clean-up the home of one of their's recently deceased uncle. Among the dust, they unearth a skeleton which leads to questions about the deceased uncle's involvement in a series of local murders.

Goyer and Faubert founded Phantom Four in late 2001 with a two-picture deal at New Line Cinema which includes Blade 3, which Goyer will write and produce.

Tally's credits include All The Pretty Horses (directed by Billy Bob Thornton), Before And After (Barbet Schroeder), The Juror (Brian Gibson) and White Palace (Luis Mandoki). He also associate produced Brian DePalma's Mission To Mars with Goyer.

For StudioCanal, the film marks a continued independence from sister companies Universal Pictures and Focus in the development and financing of English-language films. At Sundance this year, the company bought international rights to Finn Taylor's Cherish starring Robin Tunney and Tim Blake Nelson.