StudioCanal has released the first look at Academy Award winner Helen Mirren as Sarah Winchester in the Spierig Brothers’ new film, WINCHESTER. Production has just wrapped at the Melbourne Docklands, and is moving to location shooting at the Winchester Mystery House in San Jose, California.
Originally announced back in September 2016, the film follows firearm heiress Sarah Winchester (Helen Mirren) after sudden deaths of her husband and child, who firmly believed she was haunted by the souls killed at the hands of the Winchester repeating rifle. She threw herself into the 24-hour a day, seven days a week construction of an enormous 160-room mansion designed to keep the evil spirits at bay. Skeptical San Francisco psychiatrist Eric Price is dispatched to the estate to evaluate her state of mind, but he discovers that her obsession may not be so insane after all.
With 160 rooms, including 40 bedrooms and 10,000 brightly colored window panes, the real Winchester Mystery House was the subject of the 1963 TV documentary Mrs. Winchester’s House, narrated by silent screen legend Lillian Gish. Sarah Winchester, in one of her only known portraits, is also pictured below.
The Spierig Brothers are best known for the debut film Undead, which earned a cult audience worldwide. They followed it with international films Daybreakers and Predesination, yet this is arguably their biggest production to date.
