The La Llorona concept from Latin American folklore is enjoying quite a surge in popularity lately. In recent years we’ve gotten the “Conjuring Universe adjacent” movie The Curse of La Llorona, a La Llorona movie that was released through the Shudder streaming service, and last month’s The Legend of La Llorona. Now it has been announced that Terrence Howard (Hustle & Flow) and Cuba Gooding Jr. (Jerry Maguire) have signed on to star in a La Llorona movie called Skeletons in the Closet, which starts filming in Las Vegas this week.
Directed by Lance Kawas from a screenplay by Koji Steven Sakai and Joshua A. Cohen (based on a story by producer Al Bravo), Skeletons in the Closet will tell the story of
the spirit of La Llorona granting a costly wish to the parents of a child by curing her of cancer. In saving the child, the mother of the child suffers the consequences by losing her beloved husband and becoming more evil until she pledges her allegiance to La Llorona. The father (Howard) spirals down the path of self-destruction after borrowing hard money from a ruthless mobster to pay the hospital bills for his daughter.
Howard and Gooding are joined in the cast by Clifton Powell (Ray) and Valery M. Ortiz (2 Minutes of Fame).
It’s somewhat surprising this movie has landed the cast that it has, because Gooding has been facing a serious court case and Howard said he was retiring from acting because “I’ve made some discoveries in my own personal life with the science that Pythagoras was searching for. I was able to open up the Flower of Life properly and find the real wave conjugations that we’ve been looking for for 10,000 years. Why would I continue walking on water for tips when I’ve got an entire generation to teach a whole new world?” This movie must be special to lure him away from that.
Bravo is producing Skeletons in the Closet with Sakai, Asif Akbar, Colin Bates, and Stan Erdreich.