Letitia Wright Horror In Her Shadow Begins in a Basement

Police call Annie Cutter in the middle of the night. Her estranged sister has died, and the young daughter nobody knew about has spent five years alone in a dark basement. Letitia Wright plays Annie in In Her Shadow, a supernatural horror film from director Rowan Athale that Bankside Films is launching for worldwide sales at the American Film Market.

Annie adopts the girl. The official synopsis takes it from there: she starts to suspect her sister had a reason to be afraid of her own child, and that the basement was less a punishment than a precaution. Deadline broke the news.

“I am honoured to announce my next film as director will be In Her Shadow, starring the singular talent that is Letitia Wright,” Athale said in the announcement. Bankside’s Stephen Kelliher called it “a gripping and deeply unsettling supernatural horror story with a powerful emotional heart.”

Where You Know Letitia Wright From

Wright is best known as Shuri in Marvel’s Black Panther films, but she has been working in the genre longer than that. She played Nish in “Black Museum,” the 2017 Black Mirror episode built around a man who collects criminal artifacts and the consciousness trapped inside one of them. It aired seven weeks before Black Panther reached theaters, and the performance earned her an Emmy nomination the following year.

The Company Behind It

Bankside developed the screenplay and is handling world sales, which is the same job it did on Talk to Me. Ed Barratt and Richard Wylie produce for Public Pictures with Mark Lane of Tea Shop Films, whose credits run through 47 Meters Down, Fall and The Surfer. Kelliher and Sophie Green produce for Bankside, and Wright is an executive producer through her 3:16 Productions banner.

Athale directed the 2012 British crime film Wasteland and has worked on Gangs of London since. In Her Shadow is in pre-production and goes to buyers without a distributor attached.