You’ve got to laugh sometimes at the way Hollywood works – despite last fall’s Ouija being absolutely, appallingly awful on nearly every count, the horror pic grossed a surprisingly strong $102.5 million against a chump-change $5 million budget. And so, Juliet Snowden and Stiles White, the scribes behind that faulty frightener (which rests at 7% on Rotten Tomatoes), aren’t just finding more work – they’re being brought in to improve already-written scripts.
Universal has tapped the screenwriters, who also wrote The Possession and Knowing (both bad), to rewrite its untitled Bermuda Triangle pic, which centers on the conspiracy-laden stretch of water between the Florida Straits, Bermuda and Puerto Rico, where multiple ships and planes have inexplicably disappeared over the years. Alfred Gough and Miles Millar brought the pitch for the pic to Universal back in March of 2012 – along with Scott Stuber and Dylan Clark, they’ll be involved as producers.
White and Snowden’s involvement evidently means that Universal, which made Ouija with Blumhouse, is looking to craft a terrifying tale, but simultaneously suggests that the studio is going to resolutely fail in that endeavor. None of the projects that the pair have been involved with suggest that they have any understanding of how to construct an effective horror movie, which is doubly disappointing because the Bermuda Triangle is a fascinating, real-life area that could yield a terrifically spooky ghost story in the right hands.
Fingers crossed that White, who made his directorial debut on Ouija, will stay away from directing this pic, seeing as he didn’t display any prowess for executing impactful scares in any scene of his last horror pic. As long as a strong director and solid cast is brought aboard (admittedly a slim possibility), there may be hope that critics won’t send this Bermuda Triangle pic sinking to the depths of the Tomatometer when it does eventually voyage into theaters.
