Since Ring hit Japanese cinemas in January 1998 the horror franchise The Ring has seen a whopping 12 movies released. Those have been divided into various franchises, with Japan and the US telling their own stories and South Korea getting a look in with The Ring Virus. The most recent releases have been 2017’s Rings in the US and last year’s Sadako in Japan. Both underperformed, and though Rings made a box office haul of $83m on a $25m budget, that’s just a fraction of its predecessors.
Now, Paramount is doing what studios usually do when a franchise has run out of steam: a reboot. Our sources – the same ones who told us the studio was rebooting Transformers months ago, before it was confirmed the other week – are telling us that the studio has begun development of a hot new take on The Ring to breathe some life into those mouldering old bones. Word is they’re bringing back Gore Verbinski to direct, making a return to the franchise after helming the 2002 US remake of the original movie. However, with VHS tapes a distant memory for older audiences and completely alien to younger ones, they’re going to shift focus to… you guessed it, smartphones.
My bet is this new, modern Sadako is going to be a particularly deadly viral video. In a nicely recursive loop, I think this Ring will be inspired by the 2018 ‘Momo Challenge’ craze, which was itself inspired by the Ring franchise. The Momo phenomenon has already inspired some upcoming horror films, with the upcoming Getaway being about teenagers who mess with Momo while in a secluded cabin in the woods.
However it eventually turns out, I just hope that Verbinski keeps things low-key and disturbing like the early films in the Ring franchise. Of late, Sadako has begun to enter the horror movie monster stage of duking it out with other creatures, with rumors of a Ring vs. Grudge film being planned. While that might be morbidly curious, I’m much more interested in something that’s actually scary.
from Movies – We Got This Covered https://ift.tt/2UWyVlF
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