Those who prefer their scares to be more visceral and dread-inducing might never have been sold on the Paranormal Activity series, but it remains one of the most profitable franchises in the history of the industry. 95% of the running time is comprised largely of absolutely nothing, before roaring into life in the third act with a number of well executed jump scares.
As a result, the Paranormal Activity franchise has brought in over $890 million at the box office on combined production costs across all six installments of just $28 million, so you can understand why Blumhouse would be keen to keep the motor running for a while yet given the massive profit margins involved. It was first announced last summer that Paranormal Activity 7 was in the works, but in August, it became the latest in a long line of movies to fall victim to the effects of the Coronavirus pandemic, and was pushed back an entire year to March 2022.
Of course, the low budget horrors don’t take a great deal of time to put together, meaning that there’s no talent officially attached other than producer Jason Blum, but in a recent interview, he teased the return of Katie Featherstone, who sat out for the last effort The Ghost Dimension.
“You’re right, I couldn’t tell you if I knew. We’re gonna do the movie. We’re developing the movie, but I don’t know where exactly the story’s going to land. We’re talking about different things. A hundred percent, we’re making a movie, we just haven’t gotten that far with the development. But I’ll tell you this. I would love to bring her back and she’s a great actress and she’s an old friend and I hope we get to bring her back.”
By the time Paranormal Activity 7 hits theaters, almost six and a half years will have passed since the last movie, and it’ll be interesting to see how much of an audience the franchise has retained after such a long absence from our screens. Especially when the marketplace for high concept horror has massively increased in terms of both quantity and quality in the interim, with Blumhouse ironically directly responsible for a lot of the titles in question.
