Filmmaker Ryan Katzenbach has teamed up with author Ric Osuna to create the new docudrama Shattered Hopes: The True Story Behind The Amityville Murders.

Over 10 years in the making, Shattered Hopes takes a look at the DeFeo murders that inspired The Amityville Horror. Apparently tied up by options with Fox and then Sony, in 2006 they were free to begin shooting their project. Katzenbach was convinced that Hollywood no longer knows how to make good movies, “I just decided that Hollywood wasn’t going to ever take a serious project serious. They are just too afraid to say no to a bad project and too terrified to say yes to a good one“.

That hasn’t always been my experience, but to each his own.

Speaking of serious projects, Katzenbach describes the process of covering a well-worn subject thusly, “I knew, like James Cameron, when he did ‘Titanic’ in 1997 that if you were going to take on a subject that had already been done, then you had better have something new to say or, otherwise, what is the point? Amityville has been done repeatedly, but I felt like we could go the extra mile in terms of the research as well as visually. The approach, like ‘Titanic’, was to really plant the viewer back in time and make the experience as viscereal as possible.”

Check out the trailer after the jump.

According to the website the film , “at completion, will be 4-hours in running time. The film is divided into two two-hour portions”.