Movies
AFM ’08: ‘Paranormal Activity’ Sells Like Hot Cakes, Sequel Planned
Some huge news for Oren Peli this weekend as his feature film debut, Paranormal Activity (review) has been selling like hot cakes at this week’s AFM. The Blair Witch-esque supernatural shocker has been sold to Icon for the UK, Australia and New Zealand, Metropolitan for France, Svensk for Scandinavia and RCV for Benelux, with deals closed with Korea Screen in South Korea, Village Roadshow in Greece, Golden Village in Singapore and Eco Films in Portugal. The kicker is that more offers were on the table, including local-language sequel rights with buyers from Russia, Japan and South Korea (now that’s a first). DreamWorks holds North American rights to Paranormal Activity, which screened at Slamdance earlier this year and tells of a couple haunted by a demonic spirit. Rumor has it that the remake has been scrapped while the original film is tightened up, although that has yet to be confirmed.
Universal has been having a hell of a time getting their Universal Monsters brand back on a better path in the wake of the Dark Universe collapsing, with four movies thus far released in the years since The Mummy attempted to get that interconnected universe off the ground.
First was Leigh Whannell’s The Invisible Man, to date the only post-Mummy hit for the Universal Monsters, followed by The Last Voyage of the Demeter, Renfield, and now Abigail. The latter three films have attempted to bring Dracula back to the screen in fresh ways, but both Demeter and Renfield severely underperformed at the box office. And while Abigail is a far better vampire movie than those two, it’s unfortunately also struggling to turn a profit.
Where does the Universal Monsters brand go from here? The good news is that Universal and Blumhouse have once again enlisted the help of Leigh Whannell for their upcoming Wolf Man reboot, which is howling its way into theaters in January 2025. This is good news, of course, because Whannell’s Invisible Man was the best – and certainly most profitable – of the post-Dark Universe movies that Universal has been able to conjure up. The film ended its worldwide run with $144 million back in 2020, a massive win considering the $7 million budget.
Given the film was such a success, you may wondering why The Invisible Man 2 hasn’t come along in these past four years. But the wait for that sequel may be coming to an end.
Speaking with the Happy Sad Confused podcast this week, The Invisible Man star Elisabeth Moss notes that she feels “very good” about the sequel’s development at this point in time.
“Blumhouse and my production company [Love & Squalor Pictures]… we are closer than we have ever been to cracking it,” Moss updates this week. “And I feel very good about it.”
She adds, “We are very much intent on continuing that story.”
At the end of the 2020 movie, Elisabeth Moss’s heroine Cecilia Kass uses her stalker’s high-tech invisibility suit to kill him, now in possession of the technology that ruined her life.
Stay tuned for more on The Invisible Man 2 as we learn it.
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