The official trailer and poster have arrived for the gothic horror/thriller, Winchester (previously titled Winchester: The House That Ghosts Built). The 2018 film is inspired by real events and was directed by the Spierig Brothers (Jigsaw, Predestination) from a script they co-wrote with Tom Vaughan (Playing House). Tim McGahan (Predestination) and Brett Tomberlin served as producers.
The cast is led by Academy Award winner Helen Mirren (The Queen) as Sarah Winchester, the woman responsible for one of the world’s most unusual mansions. Jason Clarke (Mudbound, Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes), Sarah Snook (Steve Jobs, Jessabelle), Angus Sampson (Insidious, Mad Max: Fury Road), and Finn Scicluna-O’Prey (True Story with Hamish & Andy, The Secret River) co-star.
CBS Films is set to open Winchester in theaters on February 2, 2018.
The official Winchester Mystery House website provides details on the mansion, supernatural activities, and the multiple public tours currently available. The website offers this description of the mansion tour: “Sarah Winchester was a true woman of independence, drive, and courage who lives on in legend as a grieving widow who continuously built (and built and built) onto her initially small, two-story farmhouse to appease the spirits of those killed by the guns manufactured by her husband’s firearms company.
Today you can tour through 110 of the 160 rooms of Sarah’s stately mansion, known around the world as the Winchester Mystery House, and see the bizarre attributes that give the mansion its name; a window built into the floor, stairs leading to ceilings, doors that open onto blank walls, a seeming obsession with the numeral ’13,’ cobweb motifs, etc. Originally dubbed ‘Llanada Villa,’ the Winchester Mystery House is renowned for its many design curiosities, innovations (many ahead of their time) and paranormal activity.”
The Film’s Plot: On an isolated stretch of land 50 miles outside of San Francisco sits the most haunted house in the world. Built by Sarah Winchester (Mirren), heiress to the Winchester fortune, it is a house that knows no end. Constructed in an incessant twenty-four hour a day, seven day a week mania for decades, it stands seven stories tall and contains hundreds of rooms. To the outsider it looks like a monstrous monument to a disturbed woman’s madness. But Sarah is not building for herself, for her niece (Snook) or for the troubled Doctor Eric Price (Clarke) whom she has summoned to the house. She is building a prison, an asylum for hundreds of vengeful ghosts, and the most terrifying among them have a score to settle with the Winchesters…
