Paranormal Activity is little indie movie that could. Chances are, if you’re on the internet, you’ve heard of Paranormal Activity. It’s the new Blair Witch Project. Done on a small budget, all from camcorders with no steady cam from the perspective of unsuspecting individuals while crazy stuff goes down around them.
The movie grew and grew from a very limited midnight release at a handful of theaters to over 2000 theaters nation wide in less than a month. The film has taken away the Blair Witch Project’s world record for highest gross-to-budget ration and this week has taken down the Saw empire.
This week’s box office reports show Paranormal Activity at the number one spot, having climb it’s way there over the last few weeks by slowly rising, overtaking Saw VI’s spot. Saw VI has now gone down as the lowest opening movie in the series, something I would not have expected.
So with the film being so popular the obvious choice is for a sequel, right? Well Paramount agrees, and they’re planning to make one. “We have the rights on a worldwide basis to do ‘Paranormal 2’ and we’re looking to see if that makes some sense,” said Paramount Chairman Brad Grey in an interview with Los Angeles times.
Now if Paramount has learned from the Blair Witch Project then we won’t be seeing the same fiasco we saw with the Blair Witch Project, but probably another movie in same vein as PA. However the director of the first movie will not be attached because he is working on another film which should have started shooting a week or two ago.
According to Variety, the writer and director of Paranormal Activity, Oren Peli, has been signed on to shoot a movie based on the infamous Area 51. It will be shot in the shaky handheld camera style and will have a much larger budget than Paranormal Activity did. What will come of these two projects we can only speculate, but hopefully it brings around a large collection of more movies shot in this style that don’t just lampoon it.
Weekend Box Office – PARANORMAL ACTIVITY Scares Up Another $22 Million For First Place [Collider]