Having grown up in California, I've always been fascinated with the Winchester Mystery House. A popular tourist attraction located in San Jose, it's a mysterious mansion filled with staircases that go to nowhere, doors that lead to sudden drops, secret passageways, and plenty of mind-bending, M. C. Escher-esque architecture.
However, evidently you don't need to be a California native to find the building fascinating. The Australian filmmaking duo Michael and Peter Spierig – the writer-director brothers behind PREDESTINATION and DAYBREAKERS – have signed on to helm WINCHESTER, a supernatural thriller based on the history behind the Winchester Mystery House. They have already written the script and the film is set for financing by Diamond Pictures and Bullitt Entertainment.
WINCHESTER is:
the strange and dramatic tale of Sarah Winchester, who was heir to the Winchester firearms fortune. Her husband and child died suddenly, and Sarah came to believe she had been cursed by the lethal legacy of the “gun that won the west” and all of those who ended up on the wrong end of the gun barrel. She consulted a medium, who sent her to San Jose in 1884 to begin a massive construction process that took 38 years and resulted in a 24,000-square-foot, 160-room Gothic mansion.
Imagination Design Works, the company that owns the rights to the house, is developing the picture and allowing them to shoot inside the actual property. More on this story as it breaks!