Just when you thought “The Blair Witch Project 5: It’s Witchin’ Time!” nailed the coffin shut in the accidentally successful, cheapo-scare found/footage genre, the fucking godawful “Paranormal Activity” films had to light that shit afire again. Why? Because the Oren Peli-directed film cost (and looks like it cost) about $50 to make and grossed $193 million worldwide thanks to chowder-headed audiences with nothing better to do with their time. You do the math on that awesome profit margin. These films are essentially made for a nickel and pay for themselves about 15 times over — “Paranormal Activity 2” grossed $177 million. Essentially, the success of “Paranormal Activity” means Paramount will continue to crank these films out endlessly.
Even with a meager $23 million dollar gross so far (and likely not going higher), the $5-millon-dollar budgeted Weinstein/Dimension Company copycat, “Apollo 18,” made a healthy profit, so we assume every studio out there must have at least three found-footage scare films in development somewhere. ‘Paranormal 2’ was budgeted at $3 million and while the third film’s budget is undisclosed so far, we can’t imagine it’s much higher. What’s the point? Point the camcorder in the direction of your friends actors and let the magic begin.
This time directed by the “Catfish” bozos, Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman (cash in now, honey!), “Paranormal Activity 3” will follow the utterly unique plot of a couple who are pursued by an evil spirit in their own home. In an attempt to unveil the mystery, they install cameras throughout the house to capture the strange paranormal activity occurring. Foreheadslap! God, so Paramount is starting the “ Tweet To See It First” contest/campaign and will premiere the picture in the top 20 cities with the most tweets on October 18th, three days before the film’s global release on October 21. Basically, we call this one an interesting anthropological experiment to discover which global cities have the dumbest audiences with the worst taste. Trailer below, FML.
[via Movieline]
