April 27, 2010

Itching for another 'Ring' film, this one in 3D?

Well, even if you're not, The Hollywood Reporter says you're getting one anyway:

Combining two of Hollywood's consuming passions -- sequels and 3D -- Paramount is moving ahead with a new installment of the horror thriller franchise "The Ring."

The third entry based on the Japanese horror movies is being called "Ring 3D." David Loucka, who wrote the now-shooting thriller "Dream House" for Morgan Creek, has been tapped to pen the script.

Walter Parkes and Laurie MacDonald are in negotiations to return as producers, and Vertigo and Benderspink are executive producing.

The original movie, an English-language remake of a 1998 Japanese film, was a critical and commercial hit when it was released in 2002, and it helped usher in a period in which Hollywood turned to Asia for horror inspiration. The movies made during that wave tended to be less gory and thus carried PG-13 ratings, and they tried to attract a more female-centric audience.

The first film also opened doors for its director, Gore Verbinski, who went on to direct Disney's "Pirates of the Caribbean" movies, and gave a bigger American platform to its Australian star, Naomi Watts. A sequel was made in 2005.

"Ring" is one of the titles left behind during the Paramount-DreamWorks split and was thought to have been inactive.

The plot of the original film centered on a young journalist investigating a mysterious videotape that seemed to cause the death of anyone within a week of viewing it.

The new film is being fashioned as more teen-centric than the first, and though the logline is being kept under wraps, the aim is to reinvent the franchise. One potential scenario involves teens finding a VHS player that still works.

No director is on board.

Loucka is on a bit of a hot streak, with "Ring" the third high-profile project in which he's involved. In addition to "Dream House," which stars Watts and Daniel Craig, the Original Artists-repped scribe penned the most recent draft of "House at the End of the Street," a horror thriller from FilmNation scheduled to go before cameras this summer.

-So, this is pretty unnecessary, but hey...thoughts?

7 comments:

  1. Apparently, the second one didn't suck enough...

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  2. I had a love hate relationship with these films. Firstly, they scared the absolute shit out of me. Especially the night after coming home from Hanging Rock (there's a story about that including a film where girls went missing) and we watched The Ring that night (my partner and I back when we were "courting") and when he went home, I was walking through the house, and the power went off! Talk about a huge set up to be actually terrified out of my brain! I couldn't look at a black TV screen for a very long time after that!

    So there, you can file that under "U" for "Useless Information".

    Having said that, what do we all make of the 3D thing, the advent and imminent widespread availability of 3D televisions, and evidence based conjecture coming out about the harms it can cause? I haven't been adversely affected by 3D but do have a friend who becomes quite sick while watching it.

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  3. Good to know.

    And be on the lookout for an upcoming article I wrote, specifically on 3D.

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  4. Hey Joey! (And all others) Saw Alice in Wonderland last night in 3D and absolutely loved it! It looked absolutely brilliant. But I have to say, I found watching a film in 3D tricky. It's only the second time I've watched a film in 3D (the other being a documentary on IMAX) I felt the glasses were a bit annoying (cause they were crappy cinema ones). But I also found that when I wanted to look at other things in the scene, which I always do, I couldn't; things were out of focus, blurry and indistinct. I leant over and asked Brad and he said he found this too. I just felt that I was missing something. I kept wanting to take the glasses off. Some of the scenes were really quite beautiful, and yes, in 3D it really made the experience new and thrilling, in a sense of being able to reach around behind characters, as it were. But I have to say, if seeing these bluriness and indistinctness (if such a word exists), particularly in action sequences, then I don't know if it's at all worth it. I wanted the entire film to be as exciting as those few scenes, and I want to be able to see everything. Thoughts on my diatribe?

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  5. I get into that a little in my article (but not much). When not done with care, 3D can come off looking lazy and half assed.

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