Blumhouse Productions CEO Jason Blum says the “Paranormal Activity” franchise is done.
Speaking with Variety and referring to the seventh film “Paranormal Activity: Next of Kin” which premiered last year, he says: “It has been enough already. That last ‘Paranormal Activity’ movie was terrible”.
There have been reports of another installment titled “Paranormal Activity: The Other Side” due for release next year, but franchise producer Oren Peli shot down that talk in a tweet this week, saying: “Those are not real sequels. We have nothing to do with them, and do not know these people who claim to be making these films.”
Blum goes on to explain he would be interested in continuing the property only if a good filmmaker could come in with a new take that sparks interest, then goes on to compare it to Blumhouse’s “Halloween” revival trilogy:
“With ‘Halloween,’ we only had the rights to three movies, so we said: ‘Halloween Ends’! It ends for Blumhouse, at least. With other things, you just have this feeling it’s time to put them to bed. It would come back if some director I love, like Scott Derrickson, said: ‘I have a great idea for a ‘Paranormal Activity’’ movie’. But it’s not something I want to do [at the moment].”
Filmmaker David Gordon Green and his team that made the recent “Halloween” trilogy, the last of which releases this October, are moving on to do a similar revival idea for “The Exorcist” franchise. Blum gave an update on its progress:
“We are getting ready to make it. Hopefully, we will do the same thing with ‘The Exorcist’ that we did with ‘Halloween’ – make it in a way that’s fresh and worth revisiting. And feels different enough so that people are happy we did it. [David] is very good at respecting intellectual property that already exists and putting a new spin on it.”
Blum says his brand’s success comes from borrowing the French auteur system and applying it to very commercial filmmaking. The result is filmmakers get more control and can concentrate on making films rather than studio politics, but with that comes a commitment to make movies inexpensively.
