Earlier today, MTV announced that Marilyn Manson’s comeback was finally underway, set to come in the form of a short film entitled Born Villain, directed by… Shia LaBeouf?

As the Transformers star explains, he met Manson at a Kills concert, and became friends afterwards. The singer was reportedly impressed by Shia’s work directing Kid Cudi’s video for Maniac, and requested that he directed a short film for the first single off his upcoming LP.

As the now-director explains, “the song has all these references to ‘Macbeth’ and all this Shakespeare and heavy theology, so we tried to make Manson’s ‘Un Chien Andalou’ macabre ‘Macbeth’ — that’s sort of what that became.”

Whatever. It’s weird as hell, and possibly even cool. Watch the very NSFW six-minute piece right here:

We’ll likely have some news on Marilyn Manson’s next album in the near future. Incidentally, for whatever it’s worth, while original/returned bassist Twiggy Ramirez has called it Manson’s best yet, Manson’s father Hugh Warner described the album thusly:

“It will make a vagina wet. What can you say after that? If the vagina’s wet, all things are good. That’s what he [Manson] told me when I was listening to it. It’s very hard, very heavy, very good. Everyone should be extremely excited and happy”