Screenwriting duo and ‘The Conjuring’ creators Chad and Carey Hayes are teaming up with recently-established production banner Faster Horse Pictures for a horror franchise built around New Orleans’ legendary LaLaurie Mansion, Deadline has learned.
Considered one of the most notorious ‘haunted houses’ in the world, the house was made infamous by its resident Madame Lalaurie, a New Orleans socialite and serial killer who tortured and murdered numerous slaves there in the early 1800s. After her crimes were exposed following a house fire in 1834, she fled the city and was never arrested.
Despite the property being closed to the public since 1932, thousands of tourists still travel to New Orleans every year to visit the house. Michael Whalen, a partner and collaborator with Faster Horse, who is also the current owner of the LaLaurie Mansion, is providing the Hayes brothers access to the property.
“We love writing films in which we get to tell true stories – incorporating moments that people can look up and discover did in fact happen,” said the Hayes brothers. “With the LaLaurie House we get to do exactly that. There is a wealth of documentation of a very dark and frightening past of true events. Not to mention that after spending some time there, what we personally experienced was truly unnerving.”
“The LaLaurie Mansion is as scary a place as there is in the world and we won’t hold back in giving audiences the full effect. Chad and Carey will have their hands full, but they are true masters in cinematic retellings of disturbing material,” added Faster Horse’s Doug McKay.