Perhaps you’ve noticed the house on Bellwood, as you round into Philipse Manor alongside the restoration land – the one that looks like it might be out of a Stephen King movie.
This old off-white home, slightly creepy in its emptiness and subtle dilapidation, and yet a real potential gem with that backyard idyllic farm, caught the eye of location scouts. Now there is in fact going to be a Stephen King movie being made right here in the Hollow, “A Good Marriage,” whose title is surely ironic.
“The running joke is that it’s a psychological thriller,” said Village Administrator Anthony Giaccio, “which sounds about right.”
King's novella, adapted into a screenplay by the author and to be turned into a movie by Will Battersby and Peter Askin, is a little darker than that, with a longterm "good" marriage crumbling as the wife (to be played by Joan Allen) discovers her husband may be a serial killer.
The house is already more conspicuous than it used to be, with a huge blue tarp covering its front façade now. Crews will bring the house up to full functionality, renovating the inside (outfitting it with new floors, cabinets, etc.) and painting the outside to prep it for about a month of filming from the end of the May through June.
The house belongs to Historic Hudson Valley (you can tell because it enjoys the same new stretch of farm fencing) which wasn’t using it for anything lately. It used to house offices but has since become too deteriorated. So it’s a win for them to get the house fixed up and a win for the village, said Giaccio.
The village earns $1,000 a day for about 15 days of filming mostly limited to that house. Police get paid extra by the producers for any additional security required. They may make a few shots elsewhere (location TBD) but will mostly be inside the Bellwood walls, Giaccio said.
Sleepy Hollow meanwhile will bask in the cache of having a King movie made here. And we just may win some hours with King himself.
“Our request was that King make an appearance in the village somehow,” Giaccio said. They originally asked for a Halloween-season special visit from the dark-themed bestselling-book machine, but that time of year might be hard with his schedule, his team said. That's okay, said Giaccio, as we do fine on our own for Halloween.
Giaccio said they were “very responsive” to our request. King appears in all his movies and he’ll be around for at least some part of the filming, so it won’t be too much of a stretch to get him to sign some autographs and meet with people at some point.
“Stephen King and Sleepy Hollow were made for each other,” Giaccio said. A good marriage, if you will.
A Good Marriage film
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Originally Posted by jhanic
