Joe Hill is just your average young writer, trying to get his books read and published. Then again, he's also the son of Stephen King, and perhaps that helped a little in getting his first two novels picked up for movie deals by major studios.

The second deal just happened, with Mandalay Pictures picking up Hill's Horns, "a love story driven by horror and vengeance," about a young man who wakes up with a horrible hangover that brings the added benefit of horns growing out of his head. Sadly we can't pick it up yet to see what it's all about, since Variety writes that the book won't be published until February. The first deal was for Heart-Shaped Box, which was picked up by Warner Bros. Hill has also written a lot of genre fiction, which you can read about at his website, so it's not like he's just some punk kid who wrote two books and then used his famous dad to get them turned into movies.

There are no plans for distribution yet, exactly, but Variety notes that Mandalay has picked up two other books and sold them to Universal, where they have a first-look deal. I like the ideal of Horns, especially given how many unoriginal takes on The Hangover we'll be getting in coming year. I guess can contain my jealousy of Hill and his blessed lineage for the time being.