With this year’s modest-budgeted hit District 9 and the runaway, buzz-driven hit Paranormal Activity making insane gobs of money off of very little investment, people are seriously talking sequels. But is that really the wisest thing to do? I mean, sure, financially it seems like a no-brainer: If you’ve got a hit on your hands, you need to milk it until it goes dry — that’s the Hollywood way! It’s important to talk sequel even if you don’t have any real plans of making one, if only to keep the buzz going on your hit to milk more cash from it: “See it before we make a sequel!” But in these cases I am apprehensive. Worried, even. Might I remind you all of a little film named Book of Shadows?
Yes. Blair Witch 2: Book of Shadows. A profitable letdown from the turn of the century, it stands as the ultimate example of bad sequel ideas. While no one can scoff at its profitability — it made $47 million worldwide off a production budget of just $15 million, before counting the Video/DVD take — it still fell about $201 million short of matching its predecessor, making only 20 percent of the original’s take. That’s not just a letdown; that’s downright embarrassing. You see, The Blair Witch Project was a film entirely fueled by the buzz surrounding it. An ingenious Internet campaign (the first of its kind), coupled with a strategic release structure and the right buzz generated by the right film critics and festivals led to unprecedented success, all for a film made for some $60,000 (estimated).
Any of this sounding familiar right about now?
Enter Paranormal Activity, a carbon copy of the Blair Witch phenomenon. There is talk of following it up with a more Hollywood-y sequel — a bad idea at best. Paramount needs not to capitalize on the property, but rather the filmmaker. Oren Peli, already directing a similar film titled Area 51 about a bunch of kids with a camera who stumble upon an alien encounter, needs to return to the well of supernatural horror for Paramount with an ad campaign that says “From Oren Peli, the director of Paranormal Activity, comes his next tale of terror.” Bam! Asses in seats. This event we’re witnessing right now is lightning in a bottle. It won’t last and it can’t be duplicated. So why try? Move on and take the wild success with you to build Peli as the property of value, not the idea.
District 9, on the other hand, is a film I am eager to see a sequel to — if, and only if, it is done correctly. The reason District 9, which was both a critical and financial success, worked so well was because the budget was in the sweet spot between nonexistent and the studio’s radar. Most execs have no concept of what a $30 million film is or even looks like, and the studio, as a whole, leaves it alone if there is a capable producer aboard — in this case Peter Jackson. But if they decide, after the success of the first film, to up the ante with a sequel, expect studio suits all over this thing trying to water it down and homogenize it for maximum profitability; in other words, exactly the type of thing we loved this movie for NOT having.
While I don’t believe Paranormal Activity would benefit from a “Same budget as before” kind of approach (the director alone is going to cost them millions to come back), I feel that if Jackson and director Neill Blomkamp return with the same money and “Hands off, studio!” approach, they could get another megahit out of it. Fortunately for us, sequel talk dies as the buzz wears off, and more often than not, the sequels die with it. Let’s cross our fingers and hope that if either of these gets a sequel, the final product is worthy of the name it carries before its number.
