The Winchester Mystery House in San Jose just rang in Friday the 13th with a special spooky party last night, and meanwhile we're getting news out of Cannes that the great Helen Mirren is attached to an upcoming film about the seemingly crazy woman who built the house, Sarah Winchester. Australian directors Michael Spierig and Peter Spierig, the identical twins known as the Spierig Brothers, are writing and directing, working from an original script by Tom Vaughan. And while some of the shoot will be happening in Australia, per a release, they will be doing location shoots at the historic house in 2017.
The working title of the film: Winchester.
Sarah Winchester was the millionaire heiress to the Winchester rifle fortune, and was a believer in the occult in an era when seances and such reached fad status in the US. As the story goes, she was told by a psychic channeling her late husband that she was being cursed by the spirits of people who had been shot by Winchester rifles, and she needed to travel west and build a house, and keep on building it or else she would die. Winchester began building her house in the Santa Clara Valley in 1884, and went on to spend vast sums of money keeping her mansion under constant construction, day and night, adding on to it until it reached seven stories and roughly 160 rooms, and incorporating elements to confuse and help her outrun these ghosts, like false doors and staircases to nowhere. It's now the biggest tourist attraction in San Jose.
The house was recently featured on Ghost Adventures because, as some employees there say, there's a chandelier that likes to swing on its own.
Now, though, it looks like the house will get some big-screen attention, and Winchester the movie is being billed as thriller.