Neil Marshall directing 'Sacrilege'

Tony Buckingham/Rex Features

British filmmaker Neil Marshall will write and direct Sacrilege, a horror film set in the Old West, reports Variety.

Marshall, whose movie Doomsday is released in the US on Friday, revealed the Rogue Pictures film will combine two of his favourite genres.

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

The director added: "This is Unforgiven by way of H.P. Lovecraft, with that grim, gritty setting and a horror element nobody has seen before."

Marshall is keeping the film's plot under wraps but noted that Sacrilege will draw on themes of isolation and paranoia and take influence from John Carpenter's The Thing.