After an intense, seven-bidder auction battle, Deadline reports that Netflix has won the rights to an upcoming Lee Daniels exorcism film. Inspired by true events, Daniels writes and directs the film, reuniting with his Oscar-nominated The United States vs. Billie Holiday star Andra Day, who here plays the mother of an Indiana family whose children become demonically possessed upon moving into a new house.

Day will star with Octavia Spencer, Glenn Close, Rob Morgan (Don’t Look Up), Caleb McLaughlin (Stranger Things) and Aunjanue Ellis (King Richard, Lovecraft Country). The project is being fast-tracked to begin production by summer this year. Lee Daniels is also producing alongside Tucker Tooley and Pam Williams.

The untitled thriller explores the 2011 case involving Latoya Ammons and her three children, who began to experience strange incidents in their Gary, Indiana home. According the reports, the children would levitate, become violent, speak in growls with no memory of the incident after. The case, which was widely covered at the time, involved the police, Department of Child Services, the local hospital and local church. Some, including the police chief Charles Austin, believed Ammons’ accounts – a DCS worker even reported witnessing the youngest boy walking backwards up a wall. A local priest would go on to perform three exorcisms on the family.

The Ammons case was previously the subject of a 2018 documentary horror by Zak Bagans, titled Demon House.

 

 

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