Oh, those crazy Ghost House guys. Just when we thought they'd never produce a good movie, they went the "big boy" route and delivered the icily fantastic 30 Days of Night. It was so damn good, it almost made us forget about previous DH offerings like Boogeyman, The Grudge 2, Rise: Blood Hunter and The Messengers. (OK, so their first flick, The Grudge (remake), wasn't too rotten, but damn if I can remember anything about it.)

So what will the Ghost Housers be doing with some of that 30don money? Churning out a bunch more video sequels, of course! Fangoria brings us the word on a whole bunch of upcoming stuff...

Boogeyman 3 -- Yeah, Boogeyman 2 hits DVD early next year. This one's Part 3. Brian Sieve (Boogeyman 2) is writing the script.

The Grudge 3 -- Toby Wilkins (Kidney Thieves) directs and Brad Keene (The Gravedancers) writes this "culture reversal" sequel.

The Messengers 2 -- Screenwriter Todd Farmer returns for this prequel -- that couldn't possibly be much lamer than the first entry. So that's good news.

Rise 2 -- Gary Jones (Crocodile 2: Death Swamp) directs and Ben Ketai (30 Days of Night: Blood Trails) writes this Liu-less sequel to the witless Lucy Liu vamp flick.

So basically someone at Ghost House decided to make a sequel to EVERY ONE of their films, regardless of quality or actual demand for a sequel. (Check out the Fango report for all the good news.) Here's hoping that the inevitable 30 Days sequel is done with some class ... and a budget.

I've come to notice a trend with the production company Vertigo Entertainment. Even more than they like to make remakes of foreign horror films (The Ring; The Grudge; The Eye), they really seem to favor the recruitment of foreign filmmakers. Here is a rundown of some of the acclaimed directors they've hired: Walter Salles, from Brazil; Alejandro Agresti, from Argentina; Oliver Hirschbiegel, from Germany; French duo David Moreau and Xavier Palud; Yann Samuel, also from France; Swedish duo Joel Bergvall and Simon Sanquist; Victor García, from Spain; Yam Laranas, from Philippines; and Takashi Shimizu, Hideo Nakata and Masayuki Ochiai, all three from Japan. I guess Jim Sheridan, from Ireland, counts too. It is weird, because sometimes a filmmaker is brought out to remake his own film, like with Shimizu and The Grudge and with Laranas and The Echo, and other times a filmmaker will be assigned the remake of someone else's film while his own original film is being remade by another acclaimed director, like with Nakata and Salles and Dark Water.

The sad thing is that many of these great directors have ended up making awful movies for Vertigo. The reason is probably coincidental, and we still have yet to see if Samuel can bring his fantastically romantic vision appropriately to a pic starring Jesse Bradford and Elisha Cuthbert or if the work Hirschbiegel did on The Invasion (before being replaced -- allegedly not fired) holds up to his Oscar-nominated breakthrough. But just in case there is a curse (how fitting) on the company to ruin these foreign filmmakers, then I am glad that the latest recruit, Spain's Daniel Calparsoso, is not actually that widely respected. Actually, I'm not familiar with him at all, but his most recent film, Ausentes, has a super-low rating of 3.9 on the IMDb. Not even The Grudge 2 rated that badly. So, he certainly can't do any worse with his film for Vertigo, a trapped-in-a-loony-bin-during-a-thunderstorm-set horror film called Incident at Sans Asylum (do asylums even exist anymore??). Another thing it has going for it: it isn't a remake. The script is an original, by chef-turned-cinematographer-turned-writer Craig Zahler, who also penned Vertigo's upcoming western The Brigands of Rattleborge. Zahler was also one of Variety's "10 Screenwriters to Watch" last year.

Yes, horror fans, it's true. And don't go blaming Ghost House Productions, because it was us who made last January's really terrible Boogeyman a big enough hit to warrant a follow-up. (Yes, Boogeyman made almost $47 million in domestic box office, and to this day I still have no freaking idea how it happened.)

We don't have much info just yet on Boogeyman 2, but I think it's safe to assume that it'll probably be better than the Boogeyman 2 movie that Ulli Lommel churned out in 1983 (mainly because Lommel's sequel was constructed almost exclusively from clips cribbed from Boogeyman 1). According to the production company's blog (and from ), the director on B2 will be Jeff Betancourt, a veteran film editor who'll be making his helming debut here. (To be fair, the guy did cut The Grudge, When a Stranger Calls and The Exorcism of Emily Rose, so he does have some experience with the horror genre. Too bad he's never worked on a good one.)

According to the IMDb, Boogeyman 2 spawns from a screenplay by first-timer Brian Sieve, and the early (uncomfirmed) cast list includes names like Renee O'Connor, Johnny Simmons and Angela Sarafyan. No word yet on when the flick will go direct to video hit theaters.

[Thanks to Bloody-Disgusting.com for the tip.]

With only two feature films (The Grudge and The Grudge 2) under his belt (both of which are adaptations of someone else's screenplay), writer Stephen Susco is about the make a leap into the director's chair. Hey, anything to keep the guy's mind off of The Grudge 3 is just fine by me.

Mr. Susco will be writing and directing a film called White for the folks at Rogue, aka Focus, aka Universal Pictures. Based on the novella by Tim Lebbon, White is (according to Variety) "an apocalyptic tale centering on a band of people trapped in a blizzard and systematically picked off by mysterious phantoms." So ... no freaky Asian kids who hang around in attics? Cool.

Also on Susco's plate are the indie horror Zero Dark Thirty and a new spec script he just unloaded called Sanctuary.

In an ultimate cage fighting match between Sarah Michelle Gellar and Martin Scorsese, my money is on Sarah Michelle Gellar. After all, she did kick some serious butt as Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Plus, as much as I love Scorsese and his movies (let's face it, he's a great director), he is an old man so I'm pretty sure she could take him in a fair fight. Or maybe even in a less-than-fair fight. She's just that good.

Apparently, that same kind of butt-kicking logic can be applied to Sarah Michelle Gellar's newest film release, a sequel to 2004's The Grudge and cleverly named The Grudge 2, when it goes up against Scorsese's current film and box office champ, The Departed. Gellar's film is opening on Friday the 13th (that's today kids -- prepare to be scared) and according to the prognosticators at Daily Variety, is posed to knock Scorsese's pic out of the top spot on the box office charts.

What are their reasons for this prediction? Sadly, its not because Gellar could beat the crap out of Scorsese, although it would be funny if it was. No, for some reason they think it has something more to do with horror films opening well during Halloween. Or, the fact that the first Grudge's opening weekend box office haul was an impressive $39.1 million -- the biggest ever for a horror film.

They also think Grudge 2 will take the top spot because it has little competition from other horror films this weekend except for Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning. Plus, Grudge 2 is rated PG-13 and can attract that all-important teen audience, while Texas Chainsaw is rated R so only adults over 18 can (theoretically) see it. Yet another reason, according to Variety, that The Grudge 2 is simply destined to be number one.

So Mr. Scorsese, if you want to hang onto the top spot at the box office this weekend, you better make a call to some friends of ours, gather your goodfellas and prepare to go to the mattresses. If you don't, cute little Sarah Michele Gellar may just kick your butt.

If we've learned anything from the collected works of master thespianette Sarah Michelle Gellar, it's this: Gellar + Remake = Cinematic Bliss. Between her remakes and her horror films, Ms. Gellar has graced the universe with entertainments as dazzling as I Know What You Did Last Summer, Scream 2, Scooby-Doo, Scooby-Doo 2, The Grudge and the impending Grudge 2. (Hell, even Buffy was a remake, if you want to be anal about it.) She also has The Return coming soon, a project that looks as generic as its title.

Convinced she still has a whole lot left to offer the expansive genre of Horror/Remake, Ms. Gellar has signed on to star in Addicted, a "psychological thriller" (which nowadays means "a PG-13 horror film") that's based on a 2002 Korean film called Jungdok. (Screenplay by the man who penned Queen of the Damned.) The plot centers on a woman whose husband and brother-in-law go comatose, but when the latter guy wakes up ... he's convinced that HE is her husband! Dun-dun-dunnnnnnnn!

Not even remotely surprising is that fact that Addicted will come from Vertigo Entertainment, the outfit that jammed American actors and English dialogue in Grudge, Grudge 2, Ring and Ring 2. Because the production house would probably implode from the effort expended on writing an original screenplay. (Don't believe me? Vertigo Remake Inc. also did Dark Water, The Lake House and The Departed, plus they're also working on the remakes of The Eye, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Oldboy, Ikiru, The Entity and Creepshow.)

Last month, Scott told you about New Line's planned remake of the cult-classic Japanese film Battle Royale. It turns out that contrary to what was reported by our source, Variety, the studio has not completed acquiring the rights just yet. But otherwise the Americanized version is on its way toward production. So far, fans of the original are outraged at the idea and many people are baffled at how New Line is going to handle the violent story of a class of 9th graders who have to kill each other. Surely, they think New Line is going to screw it up by toning it down.

The New York Times talked with Roy Lee, who has produced remakes of the Asian films The Grudge, Dark Water, The Lake House and The Ring, and who is now producing Battle Royale, about the issues of the film's content and what we might expect from his version. It will take place in America (like all his remakes save for The Grudge) and will still be about high school students. Lee said that to tone down the story, he could make it so the students are in jail (or juvie?) at the beginning, but he sees that as pointless. He also assures that the film will be R-rated -- with a very hard R -- because the original would have received an NC-17 if released in the U.S. Finally he admits to being a huge fan of the original and has no intentions of ruining it with a bad film.

We can all breath easier now, right?. I mean, he must just not have been a huge fan of his other remakes, right? That's why they were bad films (okay, The Ring was okay). Personally, I'm still not assured that Lee will be able to appropriately handle the material over here.

Remember that news we shared a while back about a new Friday the 13th prequel/sequel that was supposed to be rushed through production in time to make an October 13th release date? Well, never mind. It ain't happenin'. Michael Bay's Platinum Dunes shingle has put Jason Jr. on the back burner, for an undisclosed reason, opting to instead focus their energies on ... a remake to The Hitcher. As if writing an original horror movie was impossible.

Fangoria and Bloody-Disgusting have, of course, been covering this flick since it was first announced. The plan was for director Jonathan Liebesman (Darkness Falls) and screenwriter Mark Wheaton to head back in time and build an origin-type story that, I believe, would explain what went down between Friday the 13th and Friday the 13th Part 2. Or maybe it was supposed to be the story of how the Jason the freaky mutant mama-lover ended up drowning in the first place. Normally I'd just sneer at these concepts, but Mr. Wheaton, having proven himself within several genre mags and websites, is clearly a pretty passionate horror geek.

Anyway, plot synopses for movies that don't exist are fairly pointless, but you just know Jason's backstory is going to make for its own flick someday. Just not this October, though, which means the horror geeks will have to be content with the second sequel to Saw, the sequel to the remake of The Grudge, and the prequel to the remake (NOT a remake of the sequel) of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Got all that?

A good parody is hard to spin beyond the here and now. Take "Weird Al" Yankovic, for example. The pop-music jokester has put out 11 regular albums since 1983, when the accordian-playing nice guy's spoof of The Knack's "My Sharona" (titled "My Bologna" and recorded in the men's room of his college radio station) started his career as a musician, comedic icon and food fetishist when it blew up on The Dr. Demento Show. However, every hilarious and unforgettable cut like "Eat It", "Like A Surgeon" and "Smells Like Nirvana" that hit was matched by fade-away tracks like the New Kids jape "The White Stuff" (an ode to Oreos), the Rocky III goof "Theme From Rocky XIII (The Rye Or The Kaiser)" or the misjudgment "Taco Grande" (a riff on Latin rough-boy Gerardo's only hit, "Rico Suave"). The secret to a successful parody is complex, involving a careful balance of picking a song that is big enough, worthy of a good-natured dressing down and most important, funny. The same is true with movies, and the latest in the popular Scary Movie series is a great example of what can go right and wrong with such an attempt.
 

There's no moss on Amber Tamblyn. (Is that an expression, or did I just make it up?) In the roughly two years since the dearly departed Joan of Arcadia stopped filming, she's had two films released, and has another three in various stage of production, including The Grudge 2. To this point, her post-Joan output has been a canny mix of the commercial (the afore-mentioned Grudge sequel, The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants) and the indie (Stephanie Daley, the forthcoming Spiral), and her latest job suggests that pattern will continue.

Tamblyn has signed on to star in Normal Adolescent Behavior, the debut feature from screenwriter Beth Schacter. A New Line production, the film is described as a "darkly comic look at sexual politics among precocious and privileged teenagers," and sounds like yet another solid choice for a (really) young woman who either has brilliant advisers or is preternaturally wise when it comes to her career -- it'll be great to see her take on what sounds like a deliciously catty, nasty role.