English crime novelist Agatha Christie has garnered a lot of talk as of late. Her most famous novel, “Murder On The Orient Express,” written in 1934, was recently readapted into a film, featuring the likes of Johnny Depp and Michelle Pfeiffer, and hit theaters last week.

For Christie fans thirsting for more, consider this: Another Christie film adaptation, “Crooked House,” released by Sony, will be released Dec. 22, and a producer of that film, Sally Wood, a Stonington local, will host a pre-screening of the film Sunday at Mystic Luxury Cinemas.

This will be the first film version of “Crooked House,” a story that is less-known than her more famous novels like “Orient Express” and “Death On The Nile."

The screening is sponsored by Stonington’s James Merrill House Committee, of which Wood is a co-chair. All proceeds from ticket sales benefit the James Merrill Museum.

The plotline of “Crooked House” goes as follows: The patriarch of a sprawling three-generation family, all of whom live in a 19th century English mansion, has been murdered. Spy-turned-private-detective Charles Hayward (Max Irons) is tasked to investigate the mystery, taking viewers on a lurid whodunit story, revealing dark family secrets along the way.

With an estimated $10 million budget, the film, according to Wood, pulls out all the stops. In addition to Irons, the cast includes Gillian Anderson, Christina Hendricks, and most notably Glenn Close, who plays the family’s matriarch, Lady Edith. Julian Fellowes, the writer and creator of the hit television series “Downton Abbey,” wrote the first versions of the script before having to leave the production for "Downton Abbey." Writer Tim Rose-Price and director Gilles Paquet-Brenner then stepped in to finalize the screenplay.

Wood was granted much say in the beginning stages of the film. She helped choose Fellowes as well as director Paquet-Brenner, a Frenchman. Throughout all of that, Wood says by phone interview last week, the motivation behind all those decisions was staying true to the story’s original plotline.

With that in mind, when it came to finding a scriptwriter, Fellowes was the perfect person to fit that bill.

“Julian understood that this (story) was based primarily in a house in England, full of interesting individuals,” she says. “He had demonstrated the ability to create the right setting, ambiance, and atmosphere in his film 'Gosford Park' (for which he won an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay) and has a real understanding of the workings of English society.”

Wood says of Close, “Her role is perhaps one that not everyone would feel comfortable playing. (Close) has demonstrated her willingness to play roles that have, perhaps, dark aspects to them. So, we knew that she would be right for the part.”

How Wood came to become producer of this film is a story in and of itself.

A long-time Christie fan, Wood says she’s read Christie novels since she was 9 years old. “They were great stories, and I was very intrigued by the construction of mysteries,” she says. Having spent her career in the publishing industry in New York City, working for Bantam Doubleday Dell publishing, now owned by Random House, Wood had the opportunity to work closely with Agatha Christie Limited, a firm that manages all Christie properties worldwide. Wood was in fact a board member of Agatha Christie Ltd. — providing the know-how in terms of obtaining rights for the film.

In the early 2000s Wood was approached by her college friend and fellow 1983 graduate of Harvard Business School, Joe Abrams, another producer of the film, who asked if she would suggest classic literary properties to adapt into films. Wood had never produced a film in her life, but says that didn’t stop her from diving right in.

“Immediately Agatha Christie came to mind,” she says. “So, we both went off to read all of her books that the film rights could be obtained to.”

After reading dozens of Christie titles, they came back to each other with a first choice. Both had picked “Crooked House.”

“It is a fantastic story, and it actually happened to be one of Agatha Christie’s favorites. We also liked the fact that it didn’t have Poirot or Marple in it,” she says referring to two of Christie’s most famous characters, both of which appear throughout dozens of her novels. “Those are wonderful characters, but we thought it would allow for a fresh interpretation.”

One change made to the story, however, is a shift in the time-period to 1956-57 from the book’s original 1947.

“This was the time where we were beginning to see the beginnings of teenage culture — it was the rock-and-roll era — which allowed us to bring in some interesting elements to the film,” Wood says. For another example, the Suez Canal crisis was incorporated into the story’s backdrop “which provided a different aspect to the background to one of the characters.”

Despite the changes, Wood says that the story’s original plot line was well preserved. For her and her team, it needed to be, or else other parts of the narrative would be ruined.

“The mystery aspect of her stories were crafted very carefully,” she says. “She made superb plots and was renowned for them, and you realize how carefully built those were, in terms of the clues and the suspense and the reveal, and if you change one of those elements, it’s like a puzzle. If you move an element, it will put something else out of whack.”

“She was a brilliant story-writer, so for us, it was imperative that we stick to the story she wrote.”

"Crooked House" advance screening, 2 p.m. Sunday, Mystic Luxury Cinemas. $25. Advance purchase necessary; www.jamesmerrillhouse.org