Writer-director Eli Roth, whose new movie Hostel opens today and is reviewed on pages 8-9, has been signed to direct the film of Stephen King's latest novel. In Cell, a virus carried by mobile phones turns users into crazed zombies. "I couldn't put it down," says Roth. "It's such a balls-out horror story with a smart take on the zombie genre."

Roth will shoot Cell after he directs Hostel 2 in Prague. And Mikael Håfström, the Swedish director of Evil and Derailed, is set to film 1408, based on a story in King's 2002 collection Everything's Eventual, with John Cusack starring.