Good news, horror fans! As announced last months, Dimension Films and Miramax are making a sequel of sorts to "Amityville Horror" -- not the 2005 remake, but the original film.
"Amityville Horror: The Lost Tapes" will be a story told by "found footage" from the events after the original film.
Jason Blum, producer of "Paranormal Activity," recently spoke to Shock Til You Drop about the upcoming project, which is currently in production for a January 27, 2012 release date. "Dan [Farrands] and Casey [La Scala] came to me and said they wanted to do a found footage version of Amityville and they had the rights to do it," Blum says.
"I knew Bob [Weinstein] had the rights to do it. I said, lets take it to Bob and not fight him but join him - I worked for Bob and Harvey for five years - and we pitched it to Bob, and he threw it into production. We're making our movie and releasing in January."
Blum feels that the new film will reinvent the great horror franchise and give it an updated appeal for a new generation of viewers. The story centers around an ambitious news intern who seeks to expose the truth about the legendary haunted house. Her team of journalists, clergymen and paranormal researchers may accidentally uncover something that should have stayed hidden.
"I think genre audiences are getting more and more sophisticated at sniffing things out that are done more for commercial reasons than going to movies that are made by people who want to do different things in the genre and love it," Blum says. " Audiences are more savvy about that now, they are gravitating to more stuff that's pure."
Will you be hitting theaters to see the "Amityville" update?
(source)