Movies
‘Amityville Horror’ Prequel ‘Amityville 1974’ Announced and Will Begin Production This Year
Countless official and not-quite-official Amityville Horror films have been released over the years, with most of them focusing on the alleged hauntings rather than the real life DeFeo family murders that made the New York town infamous in the first place. But up next, Amityville 1974 will serve as a prequel to the original classic, Deadline reports today.
The Wonderfilm Media Corporation announced the project today, with Casey La Scala attached to direct and principal photography set to begin this coming November.
La Scala (The Remaining) also wrote the script. Deadline details, “The focus shifts back to the traumatic murders that reputedly set the supernatural stage for the nation’s most notorious haunted-house legend. In November 1974, Ronald DeFeo Jr. shot all six members of his family in a spree killing that took on even more horrific hues a year later when a family bought the notorious property and lived in it for 28 days – a four-week window that became the core story of the Anson novel and its three big-screen adaptations.”
“This is a story that takes its jumping-off point from the true facts surrounding the Defeo tragedy,” La Scala said, “but also focuses on the human drama that took place inside a family as they were relentlessly stalked by a terrifying evil.”
Jeff Bowler, founding partner of Wonderfilm Media, and Shaun Redick (Get Out) will produce for Wonderfilm. Todd Garner (Tag) will also produce. Bret Saxon and Yvette Yates will Executive Produce. Wonderfilm is fully financing the picture and its sister company. Wonderfilm Global, will launch worldwide sales at TIFF.
It’s been eight years since Ari Aster came onto the scene and helped usher in a new wave of horror with Hereditary, one of the rare horror movies from the past ten years that still seems to come up in conversation every single week. And it’s back in the conversation this week, with Ari Aster revealing at an event that he’s already written a prequel to Hereditary!
Ari Aster was on hand at the American Cinematheque for Bleak Week: Cinema of Despair last week, a Los Angeles festival that screened all of Aster’s movies to date. The website Gold Derby reports that Aster revealed the Hereditary prequel script during a Q&A at the event, and you can watch the full Q&A conversation below for confirmation on the website’s report.
“I wrote a prequel to this,” Aster told the crowd, referring to Hereditary. “It never feels like the right time to do it. It’s a prequel, not a sequel so I don’t know where this goes.”
Would a potential Hereditary prequel dig deeper into the mythology of demon king Paimon? Unfortunately, Aster provides no further details on his prequel approach at this time.
Aster said of Hereditary during the same Q&A, “I was just trying to make a really good horror movie.” I think most horror fans would agree that he more than accomplished that goal, and the past eight years have proven that Hereditary is an enduring classic of its generation.
We celebrated the fifth anniversary of Hereditary here on BD back in 2023.
Ron Breton wrote, “Hereditary offers a similar emotional resonance to this new generation of horror – my generation of horror– as movie-goers in the seventies when they first saw Exorcist. Much like Aster’s film, we see the incomprehensible evil wear the face of a young girl; the victim of a raw deal she had no say in, as it tears a family to its core. Sure, both films offer so many terrifying visuals that can make the hair stand up on anyone’s neck – but it also depicts intense relationships and emotions that are tangible. Real. Familiar.”
“In that familiarity lies the uncanny, ready to rear its ugly head and force us to confront thoughts and horrors laying dormant and clawing at our psyche,” Breton continued his 5th anniversary celebration of Hereditary. “And it doesn’t matter if it’s been five or fifty years. These horrors are always there, as we become pawns in its horrible, hopeless machine.”
Toni Collette, Gabriel Byrne, Alex Wolff, Ann Dowd, and Milly Shapiro star in Hereditary. In the film, “A grieving family is haunted by tragic and disturbing occurrences.”
That’s putting it mildly, eh?!
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