The Ring was a brilliantly fresh horror movie that graced our screens back in 2002 (hitting British cinemas the following year), and firmly launched the career of its director; Gore Verbinski (who closely followed the success of The Ring with another moderately successful franchise; directing all three Pirates of the Caribbean movies); before gaining another successful sequel in 2005, which will shortly be followed up with a third installment.
The first movie was actually adapted from the extremely well praised Japanese classic horror movie Ringu; which itself had two proper sequels, and one prequel; and now Paramount is pulling the newer franchise out of development limbo (where it was trapped whilst Paramount and Dreamworks were deciding which movies would end up with which studio, after the two parted ways), and has hired David Loucka (the writer for the upcoming thriller Dream House, starring Daniel Craig) to pen the script.
It has also been reported that Loucka will most probably be dropping former cast members (such as Naomi Watts’ character Rachel) in favor of hiring a cast that will be made up of younger, and therefore cheaper, actors, who shouldn’t mind getting chased by a violent, long-dead, adolescent girl, in dire need of a comb.
One thing that has been confirmed however, is that this time, Samara (the murdered girl who is the focus of the killer videotape found by the main cast, and crawls out of the TV to kill anybody that watches said tape) will be appearing in 3D; a fact that was pretty much a given now that almost all major films are being shot or transformed into 3D (except, as the adverts clearly state, Hot Tub Time Machine); an intriguing and terrifying prospect, as this time it may actually look like she is crawling out of the cinema screen.
