Producer Tony DeRosa-Grund is moving forward with a currently untitled project that apparently expands the mythology behind The Amityville Horror. What ‘expanding’ seems to mean is that the film will fall into the current vogue for found footage flicks and move things from a family moving into a haunted house, to two journalists investigating the case.
The original 1979 thriller is based on an actual house in the Long Island neighborhood of Amityville, where Ronald DeFeo Jr. murdered six family members in 1974. One year later, George Lutz and his family moved into the house, where they claim to have encountered horrific, paranormal events that forced them to move out just 28 days later (and to make a lot of money out of a book about it).
This new project will be based on the experiences of Laura DiDio and Marvin Scott, two journalists who investigated the case for WNEW-TV in New York. Their original news report was thought to be lost after the TV station got rid of its archives. However, a new copy of the report was unearthed, along with additional footage from the reporters. The actual footage will not be used in the movie, only serving as a base for the story.
Tony DeRosa-Grund and his Evergreen Media Group acquired the rights to the reporters’ account of a seance that took place in the house on March 6, 1976. The news report supposedly revealed the presence of supernatural beings, including a young boy in the house. The project doesn’t have a writer or director attached yet, although the producer plans to shop it around to studios.
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