Dan O’Bannon is a legend in the realm of Sci-Fi and horror films: He’s the man behind Alien, Total Recall, Blue Thunder and Return of the Living Dead – and John Carpenter’s first film, Dark Star, which has helped to shape the face of genre cinema as we know it today.

O’Bannon is currently finishing up scripting duties on an upcoming film, and we’re the first to break this story for you. The movie is called The Pain Clinic, a film that he co-wrote with Donald Grail.

I spoke with Brett Hart, who is attached to the film as the director.

He says that the movie is a physiological thriller in the mold of Misery, The Marathon Man, Rosemary’s Baby, Seconds and Coma.

Hart previously directed the low-budget thriller Bone Dry which starred Aliens‘ Lance Henriksen and current Hellboy 2 villain Luke Goss.

Here’s the synopsis of the film as described by Hart:

“After repeated medical failures to fix a bad back, the lead character, Harmon, finds himself in so much paralyzing pain that he unwittingly signs over his rights in hopes of a cure to the pain experts at the cutting-edge clinic. Harmon is not only haunted by memories of a family he no longer has, he finds himself in legal limbo, confounded by pain and subject to unorthodox experimental procedures. Paranoia, torture and some dark secrets fill the halls of ‘The Pain Clinic’, but seven stories underground lay all the answers Harmon doesn’t want to know.”

This sounds like a pretty neat thriller and I think that O’Bannon and Hart will make a really cool combination.

Hart’s Bone Dry was a tight little two-hander between Goss and Henriksen and it features some incredibly tense moments -the cactus scene is one of the most interesting set pieces that I’ve seen in a long time. While O’Bannon’s Alien is a master class in terror and is considered a classic of the Sci-Fi/Horror genre.

If all goes well (and I hope that it does) The Pain Clinic should be going into production shortly.

O’Bannon’s wife Diane is attached as producer on the film.

We’ll keep you posted as soon as more details are available.