Amblin Entertainment is hiring 28 Weeks Later‘s Juan Carlos Fresnadillo to direct Haunted, Deadline reports.
The film that is inspired by the 1898 Henry James gothic ghost story “Turn Of the Screw,” and will be scripted by The Conjuring‘s Chad Hayes & Carey Hayes.
What’s cool is that this is a passion project for Steven Spielberg, who really wanted to make a scary film, adds the site.
The pic’s being produced by The Ring‘s Roy Lee, John Middleton and Scott Bernstein.
The novella’s anonymous narrator is a young woman, a parson’s daughter, who is engaged as governess to two seemingly innocent children at a remote English country house. What initially seems a idyllic soon turns nightmarish, as she becomes convinced that the children are consorting with a pair of malevolent spirits. These are the ghosts of former employees at Bly: a valet and a previous governess. In life, scandalously, the two of them had been discharged as illicit lovers, and their spectral visitations with the children hint at Satanism and possible sexual abuse. The book amply fulfills its pledge, laid down in the first few pages, that nothing can touch it in terms of sheer “dreadful—dreadfulness.” (Amazon)
