Antonio Campos to direct Splitfoot, about New York’s first haunted house

Last Updated on July 30, 2021

Two years ago, we shared the news that Condé Nast Entertainment was developing a film based on a two-part article called Voices Through the Trumpet, which was published in The New Yorker in 1936. Written by Carl Carmer, the article was the investigation of events that took place in upstate New York in the mid-1800s. The story of the area's first haunted house.

Two young girls, the Fox sisters, were at the center of the haunting. They remained in touch with a spirit that haunted them as they grew up. When they reached adulthood, both girls disavowed the haunting, then promptly died mysteriously. Years later, Carmer ventured back to the haunted house and the spiritualist community that sprung up around it to try to figure out what really happened, and is met with terrifying answers.

At the time, J.T. Petty had been hired to write the screenplay. The Voices Through the Trumpet project is now moving forward, with Antonio Campos coming on board to rewrite Petty's script and direct the film. The project has also been given a new title since we last heard about it. It's now known as SPLITFOOT.

A new synopsis has been released as well: 

SPLITFOOT follows the true story of a deeply damaged New Yorker reporter who, in the 1930s, travels upstate to the remote town of Lilydale, NY, the mecca of American spirituality, a place where a person can’t even buy property without proof that they talk to the dead. Cynical about the prospects of the spirit world, the temptation of contacting his dead son leaves the reporter vulnerable to something much more dangerous than the dead.

SPLITFOOT is being produced by Dawn Ostroff, Jeremy Steckler, and Denise DiNovi, while David Greenbaum and DanTram Nguyen will oversee it for distributor Fox Searchlight.

Campos previously directed the film SIMON KILLER and the first three episodes of the USA series The Sinner. He is also attached to direct THE FIRST OMEN, a prequel to THE OMEN.