Major Spanish producers Rodar Y Rodar are set to make a new $7m thriller/horror called El Hombre Hueco with Guillem Morales and Oriol Paolo, the writing/directing duo of Julia’s Eyes.

Paolo will take on directing duties and co-write the script with Morales for El Hombre Hueco, which will be a Spanish-language film set in a remote town where a young professor tries to solve a load of unexplained murders leading to mysterious happenings involving ghosts.

“Shooting is due to take place in either 2011 or 2012 in Spain,” Joaquin Padro tells ScreenDaily. “We are looking for financing with the intention of having a quality international cast for the project.”

Rodar Y Rodar are horror specialist having already produced Juan Antonio Bayona’s The Orphanage, which was the highest grossing Spanish film of all time at the local box office ($36m) back in 2007, and are close to completing the horror/thriller Julia’s Eyes, starring Belen Rueda, which the company hope to premiere at Toronto and then Spain’s genre festival Sitges. The film is now in post with backing from Universal Pictures and Guillermo Del Toro.

Major English-language projects on Rodar Y Rodar’s future slate include the $15m screwball comedy The Barcelona Connection, which is attracting a lot of interest from producers and financiers in the US and UK and is expected to shoot next year, and The Perfect Assassin, a $15m Spanish Civil War drama, directed by Andrew Douglas from a script by writer-in-demand Paul Webb (Lincoln, Dissident, Selma), which is expected to have a major cast of US or UK actors alongside local talent.