Disney’s highly anticipated live-action version of “The Little Mermaid” is still in its early stages, but another mermaid-centric project is in the pipeline — a decidedly more gruesome take on the mythical underwater creatures. “Pet Semetary” director Mary Lambert has signed on to helm an adaptation of “Rolling in the Deep,” Mira Grant’s 2015 novel about murderous mermaids, for Branded Pictures Entertainment. Variety broke the news.

The thriller tells the story of an “idealistic young filmmaker who sets out to the Mariana Trench with a small crew to film a faux documentary about mermaids. But the hoax soon turns real as sailors begin to disappear and the filmmaker realizes that they are under siege by actual mermaids. A fight to survive at any cost ensues,” the source summarizes.

“‘Rolling in the Deep’ is a film led by complicated badass female characters,” Lambert said. “I’ve been waiting to make a film like this my entire career. Our mermaids are not cliché sugary cartoon princesses; they will take you down if you stand in their way.”

The BPE team compared “Rolling in the Deep” to shark survival story “The Shallows” and sci-fi classic “Alien.” The novel has already spawned a sequel, 2017’s “Into the Drowning Deep.” “Given the sequel’s strong sales, producers are hoping to launch a franchise,” the source notes.

Mira Grant is a pseudonym for Seanan McGuire, a prolific genre writer who is currently penning comics for Marvel’s “Spider-Gwen” and “X-Men” series. In an interview with NPR, McGuire emphasized that everyone deserves to see themselves in stories, “but more importantly, everyone needs to see other people in stories.” She explained, “Part of how we learn empathy, part of how we learn to be human, is by reading and listening and viewing stories, and seeing people that don’t look like us.”

Lambert recently directed episodes of “Step Up: High Water,” “Arrow,” and “The Blacklist.”