In 2008, Archer Monroe, the patriarch of a wealthy and powerful political family in New York City, passes away suddenly. Archer's estate is divided among his family: Catherine, his wife; William, his son, a politician running for reelection; and Lauren, his daughter, a Manhattan District Attorney. Privately, the family attorney Harold Thewlis gives Lauren a message from her father that leads her to a secret bunker beneath the family property, where she finds a stranger being held in captivity. The man identifies himself as Morgan Warner and says he's been held prisoner for thirty years. While Morgan is sleeping, Lauren takes a sample of his fingerprints and sends them for identification. Morgan claims he was once a friend and business partner of Archer's, until one night when they were driving drunk and ended up killing a pedestrian. At Archer's insistence, they covered up the crime before Archer took Morgan prisoner to stop him exposing the murder. In the intervening years, Archer treated Morgan like a confessor and admitted many of his secrets. Morgan directs Lauren to where the pedestrian's body is buried. Lauren also follows Morgan's clues and finds Archer's longtime mistress, with whom he had a son, as well as evidence that Archer paid bribes to get his children elected to public office. Lauren is eventually convinced to set Morgan free, and directs Harold to set up an offshore bank account and charter a private jet so Morgan can disappear. Lauren's fingerprints come back with a match and the file is sent to the Monroe house. Catherine finds the file and is terrified by the sight of Morgan, whom she identifies as "Carson" and calls an "evil man". Lauren also discovers that Harold has been murdered, and by the time she returns to the Monroe house, Carson has abducted Catherine and taken her to the bunker. Carson subdues Lauren and it's revealed that thirty years ago, Carson drugged and raped Catherine, and Archer was taking Carson somewhere to kill him when they ran down the pedestrian; furthermore, Carson was responsible for Archer's death, using poison he scrounged for over many years. Lauren fights back and, in their struggle, Carson claims he is really Lauren's biological father before Catherine seizes his gun and shoots him dead. Together, Lauren and Catherine pour gasoline throughout the bunker and set it alight, destroying all evidence of Carson's captivity.
In November 2018, it was announced Simon Pegg and Kate Mara had joined the cast of the film, with Vaughn Stein directing from a screenplay by Matthew Kennedy. Richard B. Lewis, David Wulf, Dan Reardon and Santosh Govindaraju will produce the film, under their Southpaw Entertainment, WulfPak Productions and Convergent Media banners, respectively. From January to March 2019, Connie Nielsen, Chace Crawford and Patrick Warburton joined the cast of the film, while Lily Collins joined to replace Mara. In April 2019, Marque Richardson joined the cast of the film. Principal photography began in February 2019.
Inheritance holds a 25% approval rating on review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, based on 52 reviews, with a weighted average of 4.31/10. The site's critics consensus reads: "A would-be thriller that waits far too long to embrace the daffy potential of its bizarre premise, this Inheritance should be steadfastly refused." On Metacritic, the film holds a rating of 31 out of 100, based on 16 critics, indicating "generally unfavorable reviews".
