Catherine Keener heads into The Basement

Before she plays a parent in Spike Jonze’s Where The Wild Things Are, Capote’s Catherine Keener is finding time to star in The Basement, the next film from Ella Enchanted’s Tommy O’Haver.

Based on real court transcripts, the script – written by O’Haver – tells the story of Gertrude Baniszewski (Keener), who appeared to her neighbours to be an ordinary, if slightly flustered, housewife. And with a family of seven children, could you really blame her?

But what they didn’t know was that she’d imprisoned teenager Sylvia Likens (Ellen Page, soon to be seen as Kitty Pryde in X3) in her Indiana basement. The dark, dank bowels of her house were where Gertrude let out her darkest impulses… The result? Bloody murder.

O’Haver is ready to shoot the film by the end of the month, but there’s no word on when it will hit out cinemas.

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