Following news late last year that Nicolas Cage would be playing a version of himself in a film titled The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, a new poster revealing the actor’s latest role in an HP Lovecraft adaptation is causing predictable tremors among cinephiles.

Colour Out of Space is based on a short story of the same name written by Lovecraft in 1927. In the wild hills outside the fictional town of Arkham, Massachusetts, a narrator hunts for answers behind a blasted heath scarred by the crash site of a meteor. Since its landing, the meteor has corrupted local wildlife, starting with the groundwater which begins to take on an oily sheen, rendering plants inedible, and then the livestock, which become grotesquely deformed. In his search for an explanation he is introduced to Gardner, a farmer who owned the property at the time of the crash.

Although this latest film adaptation (there have been three previously), directed by South African Richard Stanley, will take place in a contemporary setting, the story will serve as a prequel to Lovecraft’s novel, explaining how the blasted stump came to be. With Cage set to play the role of Gardner, the film will follow the tragic unravelling of events, from the meteor’s arrival to the sinister turn of distortion of reality, culminating in an all-out extraterrestrial orgy involving the fusion of alpaca and human into something David Cronenberg would surely be proud of.

Befitting for a plot as far-out as Richard Stanley’s vision (we highly recommend reading the synopsis), the film’s newly revealed poster, created by Tom Hodge of The Dude Designs, is a psychedelic smörgåsbord of nebulas, mushrooms and tentacles, all rendered in a hazy purple light (The Colour) that screams alien invasion.

Colour Out Of Space will be in UK cinemas and on demand from 28th February.