Mexican director Guillermo del Toro ("Pan's Labyrinth") has been busy on a lot of projects lately, and not only as a director. Now, according to online film magazine Filmstalker, he is set to produce a remake of one of the all but forgotten gems of the horror genre, "The Changeling".

The 1980 original saw George C. Scott turn in a solid performance as composer John Russell, who has recently lost his wife and daughter in an automobile accident. Consumed by grief, John rents an old mansion that has stood empty for twelve years, where he can be by himself and focus on his music.

But it soon becomes apparent that he is not alone in the house. Mysterious banging noises awake him in the early morning. And one day he sees a young boy submerged in his bathtub.

With the help of Claire, who helped him find the house, he starts to inquire about the history of the house, and who might have lived in the hidden attic.

"The Changeling" is one of the great haunted house stories ever put on celluloid, and is all the more effective, particularly when compared with the ironic half comedic horrors that has dominated the genre in the decades since the early '80s, and especially the splatter and torture porn films of later years, in that it both plays it with a straight face, and manages to produce genuine chills with a minimum of blood and gore.

Now, granted, remakes are the spawn of the devil in a less than entertaining sense. And seeing as the original stands up quite well to this day, one would think a remake would be superfluous in the extreme. There are however mitigating circumstances. One is the involvement of del Toro, who in his Spanish language "El Espinazo del Diablo", or "The Devil’s Backbone", his 2001 ghost story set in an orphanage, showed that he is second to none in his mastery of this material.

Another is that, according to Bloody Disgusting, the script that may or may not be used is penned by no less a scribe than Paul Haggis, the first person in the history of the Academy Awards to write two back-to-back Best Picture Winners, for "Crash" and the previous year's winner, "Million Dollar Baby", and Dave Kajganich.

There is still no word on whether del Toro himself would direct, or on any casting.