While most of the mega studios scramble around spending hundreds of millions of dollars on a film hoping to just break even, producer Jason Blum has made an art of turning a profit out of practically no budget at all. As one of the minds behind the found footage Paranormal Activity franchise, Insidious, and 2011's horror hit Sinister, nobody's been more in the black than him. Insidious Chapter 2 is coming later this year, newly bumped a few weeks down to September 20th, and now a sequel to Sinister is in the works.
Deadline reports that Blum will produce Sinister 2, bringing back Scott Derrickson and C. Robert Cargill to pen the script. Only this time Derrickson won't be taking on the directing reins, meaning a new helmer will have to be found. Assuming this develops into a series like Paranormal Activity, the director isn't going to mean much, anyway.
The original film starred Ethan Hawke as a true crime novelist who moves his family into a new home, always a bad idea, and discovers a box of home movies of all the murdered families that have lived there. No need to spoil what happens next, but let's just say it's really gruesome and quite sinister. Whomp! No word on if Hawke will come back, but I'm betting he at least makes a cameo to set up the story of the next set of victims.
Insidious made close to $100M on a budget around $1.5M, while Sinister hauled in $87M at around a $3M cost. At those numbers there's every reason for Blum to expand his horror empire and keep it going for years.
