Aura Entertainment has acquired US rights to the supernatural horror thriller Casket Girls, starring Gabrielle Union and Mike Colter, from BlacKkKlansman and Get Out producer and investor QC Entertainment, ScreenDaily reports. UK based Capture is kicking off international sales in Toronto.
The film draws on the real historical legend of the Casket Girls, young women sent from France to New Orleans in the early 1700s to marry French colonists, who carried small chests with their belongings and became the subject of vampire rumors after a spike in the city’s murder rate followed their arrival. The present day story follows Detective Shay Williams, played by Union, and her partner Galpin, played by Colter, who are drawn into the mystery when the Casket Girls, trapped for centuries in the attic of the Ursuline Convent, escape and trap the pair inside a centuries old New Orleans church alongside a group of tourists after they accidentally unleash the vampires.
Justin G. Dyck, whose credits include Creepshow and Anything for Jackson, directs. Night at the Museum co-writers Thomas Lennon and Robert Ben Garant wrote the screenplay, with revisions by Keith Cooper and Dyck. The Casket Girls themselves are played by Hazel Bartlett-Sais, Lucia Morris, Ana Pacheco, Talisa Mae Stewart, Haylie Hansen and Charlotte Kavanagh, with the supporting cast rounded out by Raúl Castillo, Matt Frewer and Thomas Lennon.
Sean McKittrick and Raymond Mansfield produce for QC Entertainment, with Edward H. Hamm Jr., Jameson Parker and Union executive producing. Production has wrapped.
Caroline Dubourg negotiated the deal for Aura with Noor Ahmed of QC. Aura CEO Marc Goldberg called the film the kind of genre title the company was built to release, describing it as a propulsive, character driven horror thriller with a mythology as rich as its scares. Capture EVP of international sales Ella Field pointed to the film’s mythology, its ensemble led by Union and Colter, and QC’s track record in the genre as reasons for its global appeal.
Aura’s distribution credits include Anderson .Paak’s 2024 TIFF selection K-Pops!, the upcoming action thriller The Beast with Samuel L. Jackson and Joel Kinnaman, and the upcoming dark comedy The Fox with Jai Courtney, Emily Browning, Olivia Colman and the late Sam Neill.