Among other horrors, the Nazis were famous for weird, semi-mystical science experiments. These have spawned movies from the classic Raiders of the Lost Ark to Hellboy to Norwegian splatstick series Dead Snow. Now JJ Abrams' production company Bad Robot is getting in on the Nazi monster action with Overlord, a movie about the supernatural fascist menace.

The project, which is the brainchild of JJ Abrams and writer Billy Ray (Captain Phillips, The Hunger Games), will be directed by Julius Avery (Son of a Gun). The script is complete and has gotten a final polish from Mark L. Smith, who wrote the seriously violent, emotionally intense flick The Revenant. This roster of creators suggests Overlord may be pretty dark and likely harrowing. It's hard to imagine magical Nazi monsters without a dose of irony, but we're living in pretty non-ironic times these days.

Variety reports the film's plot:

The story follows two paratroopers who are caught behind enemy lines after their plane crashes on a mission to destroy a German Radio Tower in a small town outside of Normandy during the D-Day invasion. After reaching their target, the two paratroopers come to realize that besides fighting off Nazi soldiers, they also must combat against supernatural forces that are a result of a secret Nazi experiment.

It's likely zombies will be mixed in with a bigger supernatural problem. Over at io9, Germain Lussier speculates that JJ Abrams might have plans to make this the 2018 Cloverfield movie: "There being some kind of Nazi link between a giant monster in New York, aliens in Louisiana, and something in space (the 2017 movie in the series is set in space) sounds plausible. So does the idea of a prequel being the fourth episode in a series of films." Obviously this is pure speculation, but I like it. Let's retcon Cloverfield into a giant Nazi monster attack on New York City. Why not?

Overlord is due out in 2018, at which point I'm sure there will be a giant viral campaign that both explains and obfuscates everything.