Paramount Considering 'Paranormal Activity' Sequel

There have been plenty of comparisons of Paranormal Activity to The Blair Witch Project already, but I'll give you one more: Blair Witch: Book of Shadows. That's what happened when suits in boardrooms thought they had a big franchise on their hands and bought the rights to the title from the filmmakers and went off and made a very, very bad (and completely unrelated) sequel. The reason we make that comparison is because Paramount CEO Brad Grey told The Los Angeles Times this weekend that the studio might make a follow-up to the year's most surprising movie phenomenon. "We have the rights on a worldwide basis to do Paranormal 2 and we're looking to see if that makes some sense," Grey said. It should be pointed out that "worldwide" might be the key word there; the studio does not have international rights to the film currently in theaters, oddly enough. IM Global owns that sizable piece of the pie, which also makes me wonder what claim Paramount has to the DVD rights, another way to exploit the film for extreme financial gain. But Paramount isn't exactly crying in its beer over the money it has made so far: $62.5 million after this weekend, probably at least another $40 - $50 million more, and all with very little marketing and an incredibly small budget, which Paramount didn't have to shoulder anyway. Not that it would've mattered. Studios spend countless more on junkets than Paranormal cost. Yes, you should probably be a little upset that a sequel might happen, because it doesn't even appear that Paramount is trying to do it for the right reasons. It's a money grab all the way. No sin in that, of course, but shouldn't it happen somewhat organically?

Comments

[Orinn]

If movies make 3-4 times there Budget they get a sequel.
If a movie makes 5000xbudget, they get made into sequel hell?