With a release date of about five months away, Paramount is finally getting around to selecting a creative team for the third entry into their low-budget, smash success series Paranormal Activity. With your found footage series, why not hire recent big names in the documentary field?
Bloody Disgusting reports they have made a big move and hired Catfish directors Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman to helm this iteration. Paranormal Activity 2 writer Christopher B. Landon will be returning and Oren Peli and Jason Blum are back producing coming off their huge success with Insidious. Akiva Goldsman and Steven Schneider are executive producing.
Update: Variety’s Jeff Sneider reports that the film is “currently being envisioned as an origin story set in the 1980s that will follow a new family.”
Joost and Schulman kicked up quite a stir with their documentary at Sundance 2010. For those that haven’t seen it, the group from NYC built an online relationship, prominently on Facebook, with a girl and her family. Questioning their veracity, they traveled to Michigan to see what the truth was. One can watch the documentary to find the results, but many have questioned the authenticity of the film. The documentarians swear by its truth, and I agree with them, though I question some of their moral and ethical choices towards the end.
As for Paranormal Activity, I thought the first was genuinely scary and thought the latest we very lackluster. Bringing these two on to direct definitely stirs up interest, and I suppose I’ll be seeing it. No story details are known, and I would bet none will come out until trailer/release.
Paranormal Activity 3 hits theaters October 21st, 2011.
What do you think about the Catfish guys taking on Paranormal Activity 3?