There was a hugely impactful piece of news hiding at the bottom of the Las Vegas CinemaCon well.

After a few delays, Paramount Pictures has locked in a Halloween release (October 28, 2016) for Rings, the latest sequel to The Ring, the U.S. remake of Hideo Nakata’s J-horror Ringu.

This plan is by design, apparently, as the studio hopes this will be their next annual franchise.

Rob Moore, Vice Chairman of Paramount, introduced the Rings trailer to the CinemCon audience, while also teasing a new sequel every Halloween.

If you recall, Lionsgate’s SAW coined the phrase, “If it’s Halloween, it must be…SAW.” They owned the holiday weekend, at least until 2009 when Paramount’s Paranormal Activity slowly worked its way to a wide release. The following year Paranormal Activity 2 would take the reigns as the new Halloween champion.

Now, Paramount is hoping Rings will transition their third film into a rebirth of a franchise.

[Related Post] The Ring Spoofed With Modern Technology Is Spot-on!

MovieWeb details the trailer shown to the CinemaCon audience:

The trailer was set entirely on an airplane. A passenger is talking to a woman next to him when the plane hits a spot of turbulence. He tells the story of meeting a woman, part of a group called “The Sevens”. From this woman, our narrator received the video tape that ‘The Ring’ fans will well remember. The next day, he received a call that he would die seven days later. That call was six days, 23 hours and 55 minutes ago. Suddenly the turbulence worsens, the cockpit flight instruments flicker to static and some mysterious black liquid bubbles up out of the airplane lavatories. We cut to Samara’s well, both on the cockpit instruments and the airplane monitors throughout the cabin. Samara crawls out of the video and towards the narrating passenger and we are cut quickly to the title treatment.

Having Samara attack passengers on a plan is definitely not the direction I was expecting the franchise to go in, although it’s an interesting premise. It sounds as if the footage is pushing home the backstory (after watching the haunted footage, the viewer has 7 days to pass it along, like a virus, otherwise Samara comes for them) to younger horror fans who may not have seen the first two films, which ended with The Ring Two in 2005. Shit, it’s been a decade already?!

Anyways, Rings is a direct sequel to The Ring 2, although there were plans on having it be part prequel, which didn’t come into fruition when the filmmakers were allegedly unable to lock down original star Naomi Watts.

The original cursed video will once again play as a device to Samara’s curse.

Johnny Galecki, best known as Leonard in “The Big Bang Theory,” stars in Rings.

Galecki will play Gabriel, a handsome, pleasure-seeking professor who mentors and helps boyfriend and girlfriend duo, Holt (Alex Roe) and Julia (Matilda Lutz). Scream 4‘s Aimee Teegarden rounds out the main cast.

I still think the 2002 The Ring, directed by Gore Verbinski, is one of the scariest movies ever made. Have you seen it lately? Did you pass it on to a friend or loved one?