Paranormal Activity Creators In Unholy Alliance

This is a bit of business news that could prove a winner! Oren Peli and his producer friends, Jason Blum and Steven Schnieder, have signed up to a distribution pact with Alliance Films. The grand plan is to make low budget genre flicks that will run to a total of five films. Alliance, the Canadian distributor, get to release them in the UK, Canada and Spain. Domestic rights are still available (if you fancy them).

The first movie out of the block is Leigh Whannell and James Wan’s Insidious, a haunted house movie that begins shooting this Spring. Before it became an increasingly stupid franchise, Whannell and Wan made the first Saw film. Wan said of his friend’s script:

“Leigh wrote a fantastic script that took a haunted house movie with all the usual conventions and twisted it on its head.”

Producer Jason Blum is very excited about the prospect of this new deal, adding:

” ‘Paranormal’ taught us to do more with less, and this fund embodies that model. We are particularly thrilled to kick off the fund with James and Leigh.”

Paranormal Activity went from being a ultra-low budget horror movie ($15,000) to earning over $178 million worldwide. Far from being a Blair Witch style let down that was all hype and no fright, ‘Paranormal’s’ low-fi tension-building, creeping fear was excellent.

Tags: Alliance Films, Insidious, James Wan, Leigh Whannell, Oren Peli, Paranormal Activity, Saw