The 'PLL' Creator Has A Brand-New Project

Are you a huge Pretty Little Liars fan? If so, we have a new movie that you're going to want to watch... possibly from behind a pillow. Pretty Little Liars creator I. Marlene King is taking on a new project, and it might be even creepier than the ABC Family show. According to reports, King will be adapting the novel The Merciless for the big screen, and from the description of the story it sounds like it will be the perfect project for her to adapt.

King already has experience adapting books from working as showrunner of the Pretty Little Liars series, which was originally adapted from Sara Shepard's set of juicy novels... but if you thought that Pretty Little Liars was creepy, just wait until you hear the plot of The Merciless. The novel, which will hit shelves June 12, 2014, is author Danielle Vega's debut and it sounds like a cross between Heathers and The Exorcist.

The Merciless is about a new girl at a small-town high school who falls into a popular clique, only to have them force her to assist in the exorcism of another one of their classmates. (So yeah, they're those kind of friends.) The novel will ask the question, "Is there evil in everyone?" and I get the feeling that they aren't talking about the demon that they are trying to exorcise out of their classmate.

One thing's for sure: King will totally nail this adaption. King knows how to write complex teen girls, completely "OMG"-free. (She is the woman behind the TV version of Spencer Hastings, after all). She also knows how to combine the typical teen experience with something bigger and more horrifying. Just look at PLL — the girls may attempt to find out A's identity on the regular, but they also deal with extremely normal teen stuff like being ostracized from your peers and keeping secrets from your parents.

From the way The Merciless is described, it seems that the novel does the same thing. Just consider the plot: a new girl has fought to get into a clique of mean girls, only to realize that they are hardly as cool as they originally appeared. Sure, in this case the mean girls are trying to beat the devil out of someone, but besides that this is a pretty standard teen issue.

King won't be shy about amping up the horror in The Merciless. She even took to Twitter to announce that her intention is to "scare the devil out of you!" Given that this is the lady behind all of those horrifying evil baby doll masks, I believe her. (I don't scare easily, but man, those masks...)

As a major Pretty Little Liars fan, I would watch anything that King has penned... but I'm excited to see her once again taking on a dark, twisty tale of teen angst.