A Haunting In Venice Release Date, Cast, Trailer, Plot And More Details

We may receive a commission on purchases made from links.

Fans of Hercule Poirot, rejoice! Another mystery by Agatha Christie will be hitting the silver screen this year, just in time for fall festivities to begin. As part of the beloved Kenneth Branagh series, this third sequel follows "Murder on the Orient Express" and "Death on the Nile," which adapted the classic detective stories of the same name in 2017 and 2022, respectively. 

This upcoming film has a different name from its source material, so audiences may be curious to see if the title is the only separation from the book. While the mystery being adapted has been seen in a few television iterations, it is completely new to the movie scene so fans of Christie and mystery fanatics will be delighted to see how this adaptation explores the famously mustached Hercule Poirot in another adventure of intrigue and suspense. Here are all of the details for 20th Century Studios and Disney's upcoming "A Haunting in Venice."

"A Haunting in Venice" is inspired by Agatha Christie's 1969 novel "Hallowe'en Party," but how closely it will follow the source material is unknown. The film's logline reads, "Now retired and living in self-imposed exile in the world's most glamorous city, [Hercule] Poirot reluctantly attends a séance at a decaying, haunted palazzo. When one of the guests is murdered, the detective is thrust into a sinister world of shadows and secrets."

If the film stays truthful to the novel, the first victim will be a 13-year-old girl who winds up dead after revealing she witnessed a murder. But will she be found dead in a tub of apples like in the novel? We'll see. Since this novel hasn't been adapted in this way before, there is endless potential for how it could be rendered on the big screen, and Branagh is quite excited about its potential. 

The film will also focus on some of Poirot's personal struggles, as he wonders whether or not there's an afterlife. Speaking with Variety, writer-director Kenneth Branagh said, "He has to face his ghosts via a story that is making him try to understand whether there is something on the other side." The lead actor also went on to say the film is set in "a supernatural world where the normal rules do not apply," so we're excited to see the spooky turns this film will take.

Veteran actor and director Kenneth Branagh is returning to the helm of yet another Agatha Christie adaptation. As previously mentioned, Branagh directed "Murder on the Orient Express" and "Death on the Nile," while also starring as the lead, Hercule Poirot. The actor-director expressed his excitement for the upcoming mystery film. "This is a fantastic development of the character Hercule Poirot, as well as the Agatha Christie franchise," he told Variety. "Based on a complex, little-known tale of mystery set at Halloween in a pictorially ravishing city, it is an amazing opportunity for us, as filmmakers, and we are relishing the chance to deliver something truly spine-chilling for our loyal movie audiences."

Outside of the Agatha Christie Universe, Branagh is no stranger to directing. He's helmed "Thor," 2014's "Cinderella," "Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit," and "Belfast," to name a few. The latter earned the director an Oscar for best original screenplay at the 2023 Academy Awards.

The official trailer for "A Haunting in Venice" promises the film will be Hercule Poirot's most difficult — and terrifying — case yet. As we see in the trailer, the mustachioed detective is summoned to the titular Italian city by his close friend, Ariadne Oliver, who's completely stumped by a powerful psychic. The woman claims she can speak with the dead, and Ariadne can't crack the con. "I am the smartest person I've ever met," she declares, "and I can't figure it out, so I came to the second."

With Hercule on the case, surely he'll have this psychic figured out in no time, right? Not so fast. As the investigator attends a seance, we see all sorts of strange horrors, from the medium channeling the voice of a child to ghostly specters appearing in hallways. Worse still, the seance ends with someone dead, and now, Hercule has a murder to solve. But as the night drags on, the detective's belief in the rational begins to give ground. "No one shall leave until I find if the living have been killed by the dead," he says, and judging by all the creepy little kids running around, Hercule's super skills might be bested by the supernatural.