Elton John's Rocket Pictures hopes to make the first Jane Austen adaptation to which men will drag their girlfriends.

Will Clark is set to direct "Pride and Predator," which veers from the traditional period costume drama when an alien crash lands and begins to butcher the mannered protags, who suddenly have more than marriage and inheritance to worry about.

Shooting will begin in London later in 2009. Elton exec produces, and his Rocket partners Steve Hamilton Shaw and David Furnish are producing.

Clark, who directed award-winning short "The Amazing Trousers," wrote the script with Andrew Kemble and John Pape. "It felt like a fresh and funny way to blow apart the done-to-death Jane Austen genre by literally dropping this alien into the middle of a costume drama, where he stalks and slashes to horrific effect," David Furnish said.

Elton will supervise the music, as he does in each Rocket-produced film. The company is in production on the CG-animated "Gnomeo and Juliet" for Miramax/Disney; James McAvoy and Emily Blunt voice the title characters. Rocket is also behind the Sundance series "Spectacle: Elvis Costello With ...".

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