Billy Ray to Conjure Wife

‘Breach’ writer-director will adapt the novel and direct

“Breach” writer-director Billy Ray has signed on to adapt and direct a film version of the horror fantasy novel “Conjure Wife.”


The 1943 debut novel by fantasy and science fiction writer Fritz Leiber Jr., “Conjure” centres on a New England college professor who discovers that his good fortune is the result of his wife’s secret, magical interference. When he pressures her to stop, dark forces descend on the couple without her protection.


The book has been adapted three times before: in 1944 as “Weird Woman,” in 1962 as “Night of the Eagle”/”Burn, Witch, Burn!” and in 1980 as “Witches’ Brew.”


Ray’s update will amp up the prurience factor as one woman’s desire to take over a more ideal female body factors into the plot.