MUMBAI: Hammer Films, the production arm of Exclusive Media Group, has acquired the feature film rights to Susan Hill‘s bestseller, The Woman in Black.

To be directed by James Watkins of Eden Lake fame, the screenplay of the film has been written by Jane Goldman. The film will be co-produced by Talisman Films.

The worldwide sales and distribution of the film will be handled by Exclusive Film Distribution.

The Woman in Black centres on a young solicitor, Arthur Kipps, who is summoned to Crythin Gifford, a small market town on the east coast of the United Kingdom to attend to the funeral of Mrs Alice Drablow, an elderly widow who lived alone in the desolate and secluded Eel Marsh House.

The house is situated on Nine Lives Causeway, and at high tide is completely cut off from the mainland with only the surrounding marshes and sea frets for company. Kipps soon realises there is more to Alice Drablow than he originally thought. At the funeral he spots a woman dressed in black and with a pale, wasted face, who is watched in silence by a group of children.

Over the course of several days, while sorting through Mrs Drablow‘s papers at Eel Marsh House, he endures an increasingly terrifying sequence of unexplained noises, chilling events and hauntings by the Woman in Black. The hauntings included the sound of a horse and cart in difficulty which was closely followed by the screams of a young child.