WATERVILLE (AP) – It’s a plain brown house that will soon be forever known by passers-by as the house that was in the movie “Empire Falls.”

Movie officials knocked on the front door of the Carren Street home five weeks ago and asked owners Raelene Thurlow and Steve Green if they could use the turn of the century two-story, three-bedroom home in the HBO adaptation of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Richard Russo.

“We were screaming, we were just going nuts,” Thurlow said. “We play the Megabucks every week, we never win. With this, we never signed up for anything. We just randomly got chosen.”

The site is the first one in Waterville to be selected for use. Several other Skowhegan locations already have been chosen.

The movie is about a struggling Maine mill town where a shirt factory has shut down, putting people out of work. Paul Newman, Joanne Woodward, Ed Harris, Helen Hunt and Philip Seymour Hoffman star in the film.

Thurlow and Green’s house will be the setting for the home of character Grace Roby, the mother of main character Miles Roby, to be played by Harris. Scenes to be shot at the house will flip back and forth between the past and present, according to movie officials.

Thurlow and Green will be paid for the use of the house.

“We’re not going to make a fortune on it, but we’re so happy about it,” Thurlow said. “Our whole neighborhood is excited for us.”

The three-bedroom house with a front porch overlooking the one-way street has original hardwood floors and wainscoting on the kitchen walls.

“They said they would probably take stuff out – probably tear the house apart and put it back together,” Thurlow said.

Filming will begin next month. Thurlow and Green say film crews are scheduled to be in their house in October.