Never one to rest on his laurels, Larry Fessenden will swoop in this summer to direct an episode for NBC’s summer horror anthology “Fear Itself.” John Carpenter originally had the assignment; but as is his Habit, Larry will help another project emerging from a group of seriously minded genre filmmakers. Other directors include veteran feature filmmakers Stuart Gordon (Re-Animator, Edmond), Brad Anderson (who killed off Larry in Session 9), Ronny Yu (Jet Li’s Fearless), and Mary Harron (American Psycho); TV veteran Rob Bowman (Day Break, The X Files) also reportedly has an assignment.

ShockTillYouDrop.com broke the news; you can also see the imdb listing. We reached Larry via secret cable; he confirmed the assignment and shared the following:

Everyone has been very decent and supportive on the project so far, and I’m looking forward to working in the format of such great shows as Twilight Zone and Alfred Hitchcock Presents. Still, at every turn I’m reminded of the great freedoms one has making indie movies: where the biggest challenge is how to be true to the vision within a budget. There are new considerations when working for a network. I look forward to seeing what I can do within this framework.

It’s a bit intimidating taking over for Carpenter, but what the hey, we’ve been in the same sentence a lot lately as the setting of The Last Winter evokes Carpenter’s The Thing. Hopefully people will forget he was up for the gig over time and let me do my thing.

I’m not talking about the script, written by Drew McWeeny and Scott Swan, but anyone aware of my work will be quite tickled.