Up next from Justin Dyck, the director behind 2020 horror darling Anything for Jackson, is New Orleans-set Casket Girls starring Gabrielle Union, and Deadline has unveiled the first image.
Mike Colter, Raúl Castillo, Matt Frewer and Thomas Lennon also star.
The film follows “Detective Shay Williams (Union) and her partner Galpin (Colter) as they investigate a child’s supernatural encounter and accidentally release the legendary ‘Casket Girls’ from beneath a centuries-old New Orleans church. Trapped inside, they and a handful of survivors must outwit the bloodthirsty vampires before they’re picked off one by one.”
The Casket Girls was written by Thomas Lennon & Robert Ben Garant (Night at the Museum), with revisions by Keith Cooper (Anything for Jackson) & Dyck.
The story is inspired by a true story: the real-life Casket Girls of New Orleans. The moniker refers to the young women sent from France to New Orleans to become brides to French colonists in the early 1700s, bearing luggage resembling caskets. Because their arrival coincided with an uptick in the city’s murder rate, the girls were blamed and accused of being demons or vampires. The city imprisoned the girls in the attic of the Vatican-controlled Ursuline Convent, which still exists today.
Aura Entertainment recently acquired the U.S. rights to the film, which is currently being presented at the TIFF market for distribution.
Stay tuned for more as we learn it.