Ready to visit Amityville again? New “prequel” film being mounted

Last Updated on July 23, 2021

What’s in a name? When the name is “Amityville,” a whole lot.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, producer Tony DeRosa-Grund, executive chairman of the Evergreen Media Group, is looking to mount a new film about the infamous Amityville, NY house, where Ronald DeFeo, Jr. murdered six members of his family in 1974. However, instead of a document of that incident – or the alleged supernatural plight that befell the Lutz family after they moved in – the producer is looking to tell an Amityville-related tale that, up until now, has been of little notoriety.

Said film is apparently based on the experiences of two reporters, Laura DiDio and Marvin Scott, who investigated the Amityville incidents for New York TV station WNEW in 1976. DiDio and Scott’s account concerns a séance that was held in the house on March 6, 1976 for a news report. As he tells it, DiDio was a 19-year-old cub reporter at the time, who tracked down the Lutzes through property records after they fled the house, and secured George Lutz’s permission to visit the house. Her resulting news report purportedly revealed ghostly presences, including that of a young boy, in the house.

DiDio had this statement for THR: “Marvin and I are thrilled to be working with Tony and Evergreen. I lived through this horrific ordeal and I am the only person who has the ability to 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 back in that house.”

DeRose-Grund is planning to shop this project around to studios; the package evidently includes the actual footage (thought to be lost, of course) from the reporter’s séance. However (again, according to THR), DeRosa-Grund says that the footage will probably not appear in his proposed films unless it is used in the end credits; instead it will serve as the basis for his story.

This mostly stinks like BS to me, but who knows. Even if it proves to be true, I’m still way more excited about the upcoming documentary MY AMITYVILLE HORROR, which gives us Daniel Lutz’s account of what happened during the 28 days he and his family spent in the DeFeo house.

Melissa George, from the Platinum Dunes version of AMITYVILLE HORROR