We already heard that Michael Bay was in talks to direct the Whitley Strieber novel 2012: The War for Souls, and we had heard that Sam Raimi was looking into another Strieber novel The Grays (Amazon.com / Amazon.co.uk).

Now though he has announced that Sony has attached Wolfgang Petersen to direct the alien invasion film, The Grays.

The story is about the coming of an alien race, The Grays, the aliens who Whitley Strieber claims to have been abducted by throughout his life, and it shows the creatures having visited the human race for a very long time, steering us clear of self-destruction time and time again.

Now the rest of the alien race are arriving at Earth and are intent on adapting humans to their kind. That has started with the genetic manipulation of a human child, and now the rest of humanity will be prepared. However there are factions in the Government that stand against this, and it looks like it's time to do something about it.

Sound a little X-Files to you? Well it certainly should be the road that the X-Files film sequel is heading down, but it's not.

On his own site, through Sci Fi Wire, he also says that summer 2009 is looking likely for the film. Wolfgang Petersen is currently working on Ender's Game, the Orson Scott Card novel and screenplay, and also directed Troy, The Perfect Storm, Air Force One, Outbreak, In the Line of Fire, Enemy Mine and Das Boot.

So it does show that Sony have big things in store for this film. Perhaps they've seen the sales numbers of the Strieber books and the membership of his online community.