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The Next Blair Witch?
Then things went silent. Blum didn’t know why but eventually figured out that his project had been caught up in the bitter DreamWorks divorce from Paramount. When it was all over, DreamWorks had departed and the picture belonged to Paramount. Fortunately for Blum and his associates, Goodman at that point also belonged to Paramount. He was installed as head of production there, and Paranormal Activity still had a supporter at the studio.
Nonetheless, things remained quiet until August, when Paramount announced that it was pushing the release of the upcoming Martin Scorsese thriller Shutter Island from this October into 2010. It was widely assumed that Paramount acted to save costs. But the studio was left with only a couple of movies in its pipeline for the rest of this year: Up in the Air, a promising Jason Reitman-directed film about corporate downsizing with George Clooney; and The Lovely Bones, the Peter Jackson film based on the Alice Sebold novel about the rape and murder of a young girl.
It’s ironic that for want of something else to do, Paramount may have been pressed into coming up with an inexpensive and novel marketing plan for Paranormal Activity. Last month the studio held midnight screenings of the film in seven cities, hoping to build word of mouth. The studio then used eventful.com—a Web site previously used for music fans requesting concerts in their cities—so that those who had heard about the film and wanted to see it could make their wishes known.
This weekend, Paranormal Activity will expand to more than 40 markets with normal screening times. Obviously it’s too soon to say how the film will play; until now it’s only had midnight screenings in a limited number of theaters. But with foreign sales that were completed before Paramount acquired the movie, the film is already in profit. And Peli has his next film, Area 51, all lined up with a comparatively deluxe $5 million budget. Blum will produce.
And that’s what you call a Hollywood ending.
Kim Masters covers the entertainment business for The Daily Beast. She is also the host of The Business, public radio's weekly program about the business of show business. She is also the author of The Keys to the Kingdom: The Rise of Michael Eisner and the Fall of Everybody Else.
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sonofloud
Please just no more movies with hand held cameras like Blair Witch......I can't watch any of those, they make me sea sick.
scott1607
That's the first thing I thought when the article referenced Blair Witch. I couldn't finish the film because the camera work gave me a headache and nausea!
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bryanlevi
Funny this is the first thing that came up, and I totally agree. It was novel for things like Blair Witch, but has been overused- and wrongly used- way too much in the last few years. One of the worst movies I have ever seen, and I am a major horror movie fan, was last year's "Quarantine," which used handheld pretty much exclusively. It is truly awful & would have been much scarier and more interesting if they had just shot it like a real movie. The idea of being quarantined in an apartment building & being picked off by a monster is sweet, but having some idiot swing the camera around wildly the entire time just absolutely neutralizes the tension and the horror. Stupid.
Thank you.
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