R-O-C-K in the ... Broadway?

In unlikely theater news, a famous horror author and a red-blooded American rock star have teamed up to make a Broadway play. Ghost Brothers of Darkland County, a play written by Stephen King and scored by John Mellencamp, will open at Atlanta’s Alliance Theatre in April 2009 in preparation for an eventual Broadway run, the Associated Press reports. The director is Peter Askin, who is best known for directing the off-Broadway glam-rock mockumentary Hedwig and the Angry Inch. (His credits also include co-writing a little-known 1982 cult comedy called Smithereens, which depicts early 1980’s Manhattan in all its post-apocalyptic glory!)

The Alliance announced the project on Tuesday, describing it as “a sultry Southern gothic mystery with a blues-tinged, guitar-driven score.” The play takes place in a fictional Mississippi town where local legend has grown out of the 1957 deaths of two brothers and a young girl. But surprisingly, this is one macabre tale that did not originate in the psyche of Mr. King; rather, the idea was Mr. Mellencamp's, and “came from a story he heard years ago in his hometown of Seymour, Ind.”