First Trailer For Helen Mirren's Haunting New Movie 'Winchester' Has Been Released

Helen Mirren has shown an enviable longevity in her some 50 years at the top of international drama.

She's got the three biggest gongs in the game in her back pocket - a Best Actress Academy Award for Film, a Best Actress Olivier Award from London's West End and a Best Actress Tony Award from Broadway in New York. Suffice to say, she's a bit good.

A large reason for her continued success at the very top level is her versatility: she had transitioned from a stage actress to movies and television with ease while also playing characters that have ranged from historical dramas - she's been Queen Elizabeth I and Elizabeth II - to comedies like Calendar Girls and more than her fair share of Shakespearean roles.

Credit: Lionsgate

Horror, however, has often been a genre that has lacked from a Mirren touch, but that is all about to change with the release of Winchester: The House That Ghosts Built.

Winchester tells the story of a California haunted house and if the trailer is anything to go by, it looks absolutely bloody terrifying.

Dame Helen turns out as Sarah Winchester, the heiress who owns the house, which is based on a real building in San Jose.

Indeed, Sarah Winchester was a real woman, who lived until the 1920s and was the wife of William Wirt Winchester, the inventor of the famed Winchester rifle.

The legend of the Winchester Mystery House, as it is called, is that it was haunted by the ghosts of the victims of those killed by the guns that paid for the home.

Credit: Lionsgate

Sarah Winchester became one of the richest women in the world when she inherited her husband's gun company and $20 million, an even more astronomical sum at the time than it is today.

She spent a large part of her fortune on constantly extending the house for the next four decades, including adding eccentric features such as doors that opened into walls, a staircase that lead nowhere and windows that looked onto walls.

The film will tell her story to a far wider audience and is slated for release in March 2018.

Alongside Mirren, it will star Jason Clarke (best known for TV series Brotherhood and movies Dawn of the Planet of the Apes and Zero Dark Thirty) and is to be directed by Australian identical twins the Spierig Brothers.

Topics: TV and Film, US Entertainment, Ghosts

James Dawson

James Dawson is a Journalist at LADbible. He has contributed articles to LADbible’s ‘Knowing Me, Knowing EU’ series on the EU referendum, the 'Electoral Dysfunction' series on the 2017 general election, the ‘U OK M8?’ series tackling mental health amongst young men, and for its ‘Climate Change’ initiative in partnership with National Geographic.

@thejaytoday