Singer-songwriter John Mellencamp and horror master Stephen King are about to see the musical they have been working on for years come to fruition, as the opening date for “Ghost Brothers of Darkland Country” has been announced as April 2009.

Billboard.com announces tat “Ghost Brothers of Darkland County,” a musical John Mellencamp and Stephen King had been working on as far back as 2000, will open at the Alliance Theatre in Atlanta, Georgia, in April 2009.

Billboard was first to reveal the two artists’ collaboration in 2000. Mellencamp wrote the score, while King wrote the script.

Mellencamp described the play, which is set in Lake Belle Reve, Miss., in 1957, as telling the story of “two brothers; they're 19 years old or 20, maybe 18 or 21, who are very competitive and dislike each other immensely. The father takes them to the family vacation place, a cabin that the boys hadn't been to since they were kids.”

“What has happened is that the father had two older brothers who hated each other and killed each other in that cabin,” Mellencamp revealed. “There's a confederacy of ghosts who also live in this house. The older [dead] brothers are there, and they speak to the audience, and they sing to the audience.”

The Alliance Theater announced the project on Tuesday and told the Associated Press the musical was “a sultry Southern gothic mystery with a blues-tinged, guitar-driven score.”

“Ghost Brothers” will be directed by Peter Askin (“Hedwig and the Angry Inch”), with all involved keeping their fingers crossed for a Broadway run.

Alliance artistic director Susan Booth told the AP that the idea for the story was Mellencamp’s, from a story he heard years ago in his hometown of Seymour, Indiana.

In the meantime, John Mellencamp is about to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in New York next month. The induction ceremony takes place March 10 at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in Manhattan. Fellow inductees are Madonna, Leonard Cohen, The Dave Clark Five, The Ventures and Little Walter.

Stephen King released a new novel last month, titled “Duma Key.”