Even as Dimension Films and Miramax continue to develop the “found footage” project The Amityville Horror: The Lost Tapes, Evergreen Media Group is planning their own take on the “real” haunted house. Read on for the full announcement:
Tony DeRosa-Grund, Executive Chairman of Evergreen Media Group announced today the company has acquired the found footage of famous March 6, 1976 séance conducted by WNEW TV news in the Amityville house in addition to their previously acquired life rights of former WNEW-TV reporters Laura DiDio and Marvin Scott to complete the rights package for their true Amityville prequel.
With exclusive new disclosures from the Catholic Church, Evergreens Amityville prequel will connect the demonic evil in the Amityville Horror house to the murders of the DeFeo family in the same house two years earlier.
While the actual story itself is being kept under tight wraps, this will be first time ever that the true prequel to the Amityville Horror will be told said DeRosa-Grund, Evergreen Media Group.
Marvin and I are thrilled to be working with Tony and Evergreen, said Laura DiDio. I lived through this horrific ordeal and I am the only person who has the ability tell the true Amityville prequel story in its entirety. Even after all these years, after what I personally experienced, there is nothing anyone could ever do or say to get me to go back in that house!
DiDio, then a nineteen year old reporter for the New York City television station in 1976, was miraculously able to locate and befriend the Lutz family (of Amityville Horror fame) when seasoned print and broadcast journalists could not locate the family after they went into hiding immediately following the worldwide news sensation generated by the Lutzs initial press conference announcing the supernatural phenomenon that was tormenting the family. George Lutz not only gave DiDio the exclusive news story to the horrors that the Lutz family endured in the house, he also gave DiDio the keys and sole access to the Amityville house. Scott, a seven time Emmy award winning reporter, was the on-camera talent for the famed séance, while DiDio put together and produced the piece, mounted by the station in an attempt to ascertain the origin of the source of the evil in the home.
The Amityville Horror is arguably the worlds most recognized haunted house story. The two true stories in the series, the 1979 original (American International Pictures) and the 2005 reboot (Dimension) have grossed over $400,000,000 worldwide. The 1979 original is one of the most profitable independent films of all time.
Evergreen and DeRosa-Grund are currently in post-production on the James Wan directed genre property “The Conjuring” for New Line Cinema which will go into wide release January 25, 2013.
