UHM - Skeleton Key

Skeleton Key

The film centers on a caretaker (Hudson) working with an elderly couple in their New Orleans home, which happens to have mysterious goings-on.

LATEST NEWS

7/04/05
Moviefone has a 3-minute featurette for the film located here.

6/08/05
Blackfilm.com got their hands on a number of new pics, which can be viewed at the very bottom of this page.

6/03/05
Star Kate Hudson spoke with SciFi Wire about the movie, saying: "This movie's based on things that I believe really exist," Hudson said in an interview. "Those to me are the scariest movies. That's why I loved this movie when I read it. It can stretch your imagination or it can heighten what you think can be reality. It's based on voodoo."

3/17/05
You can check the poster above courtesy of Latino Review, and you can now view the trailer and official site.

2/17/05
According to Fango the release date has been shifted from July to August.

1/09/05
Added a couple pics.

11/22/04
A release date has been set.

11/05/04
Actor Peter Sarsgaard finished production on the film and SciFi Wire spoke with the star briefly about the film. He was quoted saying: "I play an estate lawyer. It's with Kate Hudson, Gena Rowlands and John Hurt. It's a kind of conceptual horror movie. t's hard to begin to even talk about it, because it's like one of those things [where] you can't give anything away. Iain Softley [K-Pax] directed it. We filmed in Louisiana, and there's a lot of voodoo in the movie. How else can I describe it? Basically, John Hurt and Gena Rowlands are very old and live in this big plantation house. Kate Hudson plays a hospice worker who's taking care of them, and I play the estate lawyer who's trying to deal with their estate. They're not dead yet, but they're dying. John Hurt has just suffered a stroke, and then Kate and I kind of have a romantic thing happen."

9/27/04
Screenwriter Ehren Kruger spoke with Dread Central in an interview, where the following was revealed:

Well, since we can’t go much further into Ring 2, what can you tell us about Skeleton Key?

The Skeleton Key is a mysterious Southern Gothic creep-out. It’s hard to describe in a short summary, but it belongs to the category of horror movies like Don't Look Now or Rosemary's Baby where ideas, suspense and dread are the driving factors. It’s set in and around modern-day New Orleans. Kate Hudson plays a live-in nursse hired by an elderly woman (Gena Rowlands) to care for her dying husband (John Hurt) in a foreboding plantation mansion in the Louisiana bayous. Intrigued by the couple’s secretive ways and their rambling house, Kate explores the mansion and discovers that the skeleton key she’s been given opens all the doors in the house except one. Her efforts to discover what lies behind it spiral her into the middle of a terrifying mystery.

In many respects, the story has the form and trappings of a ghost story, but it plays out (we hope) like no ghost story you’ve ever seen. Peter Sarsgaard and Joy Bryant have the other significant roles and Iain Softley is directing. We’ve got about another month of principal photography to go.

Where did the idea for Skeleton Key come from initially? How long had the script existed before it was picked up?

The idea for the script came from an interest in writing a ghost story that was, in some respect, specifically American. Most examples of the genre aren’t rooted in a real cultural identity and so they often feel bland, generic and inauthentic. New Orleans as a city is so representative of America’s "melting pot" of races, classes and cultures – and buried secrets – that it was really a case of the setting inspiring the tale.

I wrote the script two years ago and Universal picked it up. We were set to shoot last year, but it wouldn’t quite have been appropriate for Kate’s character to be pregnant, so we postponed production until this spring.

7/22/04
Dark Horizons has an interview up with actress Kate Hudson, where she talks a little about the film.

6/06/04
According to a source the "Grace Thorpe" character is Martin Thorpe's little sister. Apparently the two siblings are "from an affluent family that lived in the early 1900's". They apparently play a major part in the history of the house.

6/02/04
I've added young star Jamie Lee Redmon (Seabiscuit) to the cast. She plays "Grace Thorpe" who's supposedly one of the "strange things" within the home.

5/28/04
Coming Soon posted a detailed plot for the film. Check it: Set largely in the dark atmospheric backwoods just outside of New Orleans, The Skeleton Key stars Hudson as Caroline, a live-in nurse hired to care for an elderly woman's (Rowlands) ailing husband (Hurt) in their home ... a foreboding and decrepit Gothic mansion in the Louisiana delta. Intrigued by the enigmatic couple, their mysterious and secretive ways and their rambling house, Caroline beings to explore the old mansion. Armed with a skeleton key that unlocks every door, she discovers a hidden attic room that holds a deadly and terrifying secret. Peter Sarsgaard portrays Luke, the local attorney working on the couple's estate, and Joy Bryant plays Jill, Caroline's best friend.

4/23/04
I've added young star Forrest Landis to the cast. You may remember him from the film Cheaper By the Dozen.

3/25/04
I've added Joy Bryant to the cast, who you may remember from the Denzil Washington film Antwone Fisher.

1/29/04
Peter Sarsgaard has been added to the cast. You can see the rest of the characters needed for the film here.

DETAILS

- Forrest Landis plays Martin Thorpe in the film.
- Shooting begins on April 12 in Louisiana.
- Peter Sarsgaard plays Kate Hudon's love interest.
- Production for the film had to be delayed for a few months due to Kate Hudson's pregnancy.
- Being put out by Universal Pictures.
- Ehren Kruger (The Ring, Scream 3) wrote the script.