One of our favorite ongoing behind-the-scenes stories at the moment are the petty, absurd battles between Lionsgate and Paramount over their head-to-head Halloween franchises, “Paranormal Activity” and “Saw.” Lionsgate kicked “Saw VI” director Kevin Greutert director off the series, and he signed to direct the sequel to Paramount’s sleeper hit, only for Lionsgate to decide to exercise their option on him after all, forcing him to direct the film against his will. A series of increasingly depressed-sounding messages appeared from Greutert, since deleted from his blog, and “Paranormal Activity 2” was left without a director.
Now, as the LA Times reports, Paramount may be aiming a little higher with their choice of director. The paper’s 24 Frames blog reports that the studio initially sought Akiva Goldsman, president of the guild of hacks, to make his feature directorial debut (he’s previously helmed episodes of “Fringe” and “Kings”), although he’s no longer linked to the project (man, when the man behind “Batman and Robin” and “The Da Vinci Code” turns something down…). Now, there’s three experienced genre directors on the studio’s list. The biggest? Brian De Palma.
Yes. Brian De Palma. Fresh off probably the two worst movies of his always spotty career, “Redacted” and “The Black Dahlia” (in fact, the latter may be one of the worst movies of anyone’s career), De Palma’s struggled to get new projects off the ground, and could clearly do with a comeback movie. In a way, the original film fits quite well with De Palma’s voyeuristic, pervy sensibilities, but it still seems like a major case of slumming it for one of the original Movie Brats (even if he is our least favorite).
Apparently, De Palma’s not the only name being looked at, as both Brad Anderson (“The Machinist”) and Greg McLean (“Wolf Creek”) may be in the running. Both have proven chops in the horror genre; Anderson was behind the very underrated, creepy-as-hell “Session 9,” while McLean’s “Wolf Creek” was a solid, grindhouse slasher flick.
It’s interesting that the studio are courting well-respected genre directors now, rather than using directors from “Saw” – could it be that their response to having their original director poached is to try and, you know, make a good movie? With names like these on board, the studio may be breaking away from the found footage format of the first film – “Paranormal Activity 2: Book of Shadows” as it were… Having said that, with a release date already locked as October 22nd, and no director on board, it seems pretty unlikely.
Whatever the studio ends up doing with PA2, it will suck. It can't not suck. The original was a labor of love made by a clever indie auteur with 15 grand and a dream and no reasonable expectation of making it big. The second will be a soulless Product by a studio thinking in terms of cashing in on a $100 million franchise.
I agree with Martin.
However, DePalma is still one of my favorite filmmakers, despite his last two films sucking it big time.
"he original was a labor of love made by a clever indie auteur"
You watched a completely different movie than I did. Blech.
Whatever, the original was all hype and was not very exciting, and provided no jumps you couldn't see coming a mile away.
Though, I did like the end, when… well I won't go into spoilers, but it was one of 2 things I would have liked to happen.
DePalma is not a director I actually like all that much, I think most of his stuff is crap or highly-overrated.
Regardless I doubt I will be checking out PA2…
De Palma getting his hands on Paranormal Activity could result in the most fascinating horror movie of its generation… if he were given more than a couple of days to shoot the damn thing. I give it a week before Darren Lynn Bousman signs on.
He's probably been considered because of the YouTubey-ness of Redacted (an abortion of a film; risible).
Or he's being considered because of his mastery of camerawork and staging of suspense sequences, considering no American filmmaker has ever done so much with the idea of the camera's perspective.
Also, bah, Redacted is an angry, brilliant, sick satire that no one got.
I seriously don't get why DePalma is so loved (though the Euros love him to death). He's made some enjoyable genre films, and yeah, he's directed some nice sequences, but he's made only a very small handful of good to very good films (can probably count them on one hand).
As for PA2. Palma's career is at a standstill for good reason. How he could fumble material that could so easily be great like "Black Dahlia" is kind of mindblowing. Not surprised he's considering doing this.
You guys like Lucas more than DePalma? Really?
Paranormal Activities was one of the worst movies I've ever seen in my life: badly acted, written, shot…Everything. It was a masterpiece of marketing, nothing more. Personally, I would hope De Palma will get the job, and then consider directing this sequel as the cinema equivalent of a hate fuck: just tear it up with sleaze, voyeurism, gore, comedy and bitterness.
@bonzob
Good point, I don't even consider Lucas as one of the movie brats, but I'd definitely take DePalma over him. But even then, I'm just not a big fan – I love The Untouchables, and sort of like Carlito's Way, but pretty much everything else I can leave. Kevin hits the nail on the head, pretty much.
It's worth remembering that De Palma's last release was also a found-footage sort of movie, the Iraq war film "Redacted", so he certainly doesn't seem averse to working in that format.