All The Mary Elizabeth Winstead News That’s Fit To Print

One bit of casting news, one set of photos and one full short film. Seems that Mary Elizabeth Winstead stories are like the number 38 bus.

Let’s start with the casting.

Another new project to have been unveiled at the EFM in Berlin sounds rather reminiscent of The Innocents, at least in Variety‘s version of events:

[Winstead will play] an American student looking after her tutor’s two children in a remote English manor house. She soon comes to believe that she and the children are being haunted when their lives are threatened by mysterious events.

Daniel Stamm, the director of The Last Exorcism is also set on the project. We haven’t heard anything about his proposed, English-language remake of Martyrs for a while – the one he suggested might have a happy end, for crying out loud; nor is it looking good for the second Night Chronicles film, Reincarnate, that he was also attached to.

Already in the can and coming this summer is a rather different take on horror tropes - Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, in which Winstead stars as Mary Todd Lincoln. The latest images from that have been released to USA Today. I’m perhaps cheating by including them here as Winstead isn’t in any of them.

Still, they should pop up on Bleeding Cool somewhere and this seems like a good place.

And, continuing the horror theme to the bitter end, Riley Stearns has made public his first short film, Magnificat that stars Ms. Winstead and features Stephen Tobolowsky.

Here it is in full – about twelve minutes worth of… well, let’s just say it put me in mind of not one, but two Roman Polanski movies. I’ll name them below the video, in case you’re afraid of spoilers. And no, it’s not Bitter Moon and Pirates.

Enjoy that?

Now, I was particularly amused by how, with that conceit in the end credits with the red letters, Ms. Winstead’s card just gave it up, on a plate.

The Polanski movies I had in mind, of course, were Repulsion and Rosemary’s Baby. It’s not a patch on either, but hey. Maybe it would be more fair to evoke House of the Devil or another of those “tributes.”

Winstead has been receiving tweets from folk who liked the film. Let’s close out on a handful.

@RileyStearns @M_E_Winstead SO AWESOME YOU GUYS! loved it! watched it in the dark with the wind banging on my window. totally FREAKED me out

— mark webber (@likemark) February 8, 2012

MAGNIFICAT is the greatest short movie ever. @M_E_Winstead & @RileyStearns are SO talented. Congratulations, guys. You’re pretty awesome.

— lowly (@ohmygyllenhaal) February 9, 2012

@M_E_Winstead Just watched MAGNIFICAT and I think its great!

— John Bates (@Kryptobates) February 9, 2012

@RileyStearns @M_E_Winstead Loved the short – watched it twice tonight! Congrats on a great piece of work. #magnificat

— Adam Bond (@adamebond) February 9, 2012

@RileyStearns @M_E_Winstead Wow. Magnificat. So…wow, no words. Love it. Perfect short film.

— Rebecca Devine (@RebTitch) February 8, 2012

Yeah, so Twitter’s obviously good for opening some kind of conversation with your fans, making them feel closer to you and, dare I say it, more enthusiastic about your work than they might otherwise have been.

But that’s probably a good thing. Anything that gets new filmmakers “out there” is good.