The film will star an Irish actor.
A ‘chilling’ ghost story based on a horror classic is being shown on BBC on Christmas Eve.
The 30-minute short film, Woman of Stone, is a part of the broadcaster’s supernatural anthology series A Ghost Story for Christmas.
Hailing from Mark Gatiss (co-creator of the BBC’s Sherlock and Dracula), it is his seventh entry in the anthology series and sees him bringing to life E. Nesbit’s ‘chilling’ short story, Man-Size in Marble.
The plot synopsis reads: “In her final days, author Edith Nesbit (Celia Imrie) recounts the chilling tale of newlywed Victorians Jack (Irish actor Éanna Hardwicke) and Laura (Phoebe Horn).
“The couple are settling into a small cottage in a quiet village when their idyll is overshadowed by the superstitious warnings of their housekeeper, Mrs Dorman (Monica Dolan), and the legend of the village church’s tomb effigies – a pair of marble knights who are said to rise from their slabs on Christmas Eve…”
Speaking about adapting Nesbit’s story, Gatiss said: “E. Nesbit’s Man-Size in Marble was the first ghost story I ever read, and it left a profound impression on me. I even referenced it in an episode of Doctor Who which I wrote for Peter Capaldi!
“I’ve wanted to adapt it before but the cost of constructing the marble tomb effigies was always slightly beyond us. Happily, this year we got a little cash injection which made it possible.”
He went on to say: “Because last year’s story by Arthur Conan Doyle was entirely and deliberately male, I wanted a stark contrast.
“Nesbit was an incredible woman and a fascinating writer. The adaptation is called Woman of Stone as I’ve tried to draw out what I think are the themes of the story.”
Hardwicke, who will be playing Roy Keane soon in sports film Saipan, admitted he knew nothing about E. Nesbit prior to reading the script.
He said: “When I was reading about her before shooting I discovered how prolific she was. She worked across just about every form you could imagine: novels, essays, short stories, children’s stories, ghost stories.
“It’s a proper ghost story – mysterious, chilling, truly frightening. I love ghost stories that land in that in-between space; we don’t know whether we believe or not, we don’t know if they’re of our own creation or inexplicably real.”
A Ghost Story for Christmas: Woman of Stone is being broadcast on BBC Two at 10.15pm on Christmas Eve.
