Before the current found footage craze, the big horror focus was on remaking Japanese horror films. In the wake of THE RING, we got a number of lackluster films capitalizing on the creepy ghosts that populated asian horror films. The most successful of those movies was THE GRUDGE starring Sarah Michelle Gellar. After several sequels failed to capitalize on the first movie’s almost $200 million box office worldwide, producer Sam Raimi is going to try remaking it again.
Raimi and partner Rob Tapert will produce again via Ghost House Pictures with MIDNIGHT MEAT TRAIN screenwriter Jeff Buhler working on a draft. It remains to be seen if the film will retell the same story as the Japanese and American films or take the same basic structure and tell a brand new story.
THE GRUDGE describes a curse that is born when someone dies in the grip of a powerful rage or extreme sorrow. The curse is an entity created where the person died. Those who encounter this evil supernatural force die and the curse is reborn repeatedly, passed from victim to victim in an endless, growing chain of horror.
JU-ON: THE GRUDGE generated six feature film installments while the English-language version produced a trilogy. It seems apparent that this new film is aiming for a theatrical release versus a direct to home video project, but with the films costing almost no money to make, the studio stands to make a hefty profit even if the new film does half the business of the first.
THE GRUDGE remake has no set release date, but with how quickly these can get made, it could still conceivably be released this year.