When it rains it pours. As CHUD message board regular and Nicholas Nunziata protege Troy Nixey is hard at work on his debut feature, Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark, sporting a Guillermo del Toro script and the starpower of Guy Pearce and Katie Holmes, he and his co-producer (the aforementioned Nunz) have announced their next project: Simple Machines.

Nick and Troy have been working on Simple Machines for a while; it tells the story of a young inventor whose creation has been grabbed by an evil asshole who wants to use it to corrupt the world. It’s a family film (so nobody will be having their faces fucked or their cocks punched), and it’s been snapped up by Phoenix Pictures, whose next movie is Martin Scorsese’s Shutter Island.

What does Nick have to say about it? Here’s the Big Fella himself weighing in:

This has been coming together for quite a few years, dozens of drafts, amazing
conceptual artwork and pre-viz efforts and it is a visionary and deeply
affecting story Troy has imagined. Watching the project evolve and Troy develop
as a filmmaker has been astonishing. His work on
Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark has
already turned heads and
Simple Machines is something he’s been filming in his
head for quite some time and I have no doubt that audiences will soon be adding
his name to the list of filmmakers whose work is absolutely unmissable. You look
at the rest of the team, folks coming off of working with David Fincher and
Martin Scorsese… yeah, this is a film folks can start looking forward to.

You can check out what Troy’s vision is like with this trailer for his 17 minute short, Latchkey’s Lament. Troy will be shooting Simple Machines next after Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark; like I said, when it rains, it pours.