Paramount has announced that Paranormal Activity 4 is being produced and that it will be ready by Halloween weekend. The move isn’t that surprising when you consider the great steaming f*ckloads of money they’ve already made on the franchise. I honestly didn’t even know a third Paranormal Activity existed, and it set an opening weekend record for best October debut and best opening weekend for a horror film with $54 million, before going on to earn $202.2 million worldwide. Oren Peli directed the first one on a $15,000 budget ($194.4 million worldwide gross), then stepped into the producer’s chair for the next two, which were directed by Tod Williams and the team of Henry Joost and Ariel Shulman, respectively. No word yet on who’ll direct the fourth, but rest assured it probably won’t matter much.

Anyway, great for them. I’ll probably continue not seeing these. I just don’t really get the appeal. A curtain blows open, and a lady looks outside, and she’s like, “OH MY GOD, IT’S NOT EVEN WINDY! THIS HOUSE MUST BE HAUNTED!” It seems more like the raw material for a phone message from my mom than a movie franchise. But it’s cool that you guys like it. You know, whatever makes you happy.

This is a crazy story, you guys.  It turns out, a horror movie opened in Italy.  And you know what happened?  Kids got scared.  But you know who’s not happy about that?  That’s right, Mussolini.

“For the past two weeks a trailer has been shown obsessively on TV and is terrifying thousands of children. The movie is called ‘Paranormal Activity’,” Italian Defence Minister [!!!] Ignazio La Russa said last Thursday. “It’s a terrible thing. I took notice because my seven-year-old son told me ‘Daddy, I’m scared’.”

Alessandra Mussolini, granddaughter of the Italian fascist dictator and head of a parliamentary committee on children [!!!!!!], said “Paranormal Activity” had “highly distressing content” and was causing “panic attacks and psychological problems among youths.”  “I don’t think we can ban ‘Paranormal Activity’ now, but surely we need to study how to warn parents of the risks their children are incurring,” Mussolini said.  The Italian parents’ association noted that admission to the movie is restricted in the United States, Britain, Germany and The Netherlands and asked for an age limit of 18 in Italy. [Yahoo]

Ahh, yes, sage advice from the brutal dictator’s granddaughter.  And the Italian public would’ve listened too, if only she’d been dressed in a cleavage-bearing nurse’s uniform and being chased by a clown in a diaper with a butterfly net.

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(“Hurrr, I’m terrified of doors.”)

It still haven’t seen Paranormal Activity because it looks boring, but the “found-footage” thriller did earn $151 million on an initial budget of $15,000 (initial being a key distinction…), so naturally a sequel was greenlit.  So how do you use studio backing to recreate the charm of a low-budget phenomenon?  You go the Blair Witch 2 route and just hire a studio director, duh.  Don’t you know anything about Hollywood?

Paramount has hired screenwriter Michael R. Perry and director Kevin Greutert to create the sequel. Greutert made his directorial debut on the sixth “Saw” film, which grossed just $31 million worldwide, with observers thinking that the franchise may be bleeding dry.  Significantly, Paramount will unleash it in theaters on the pre-Halloween weekend of October 22, which sets it against that date’s reigning champion in previous years, the next installment in Lionsgate’s “Saw” series (this year would be “VII”). [THR]

Have you noticed every stupid horror movie seems to make money in this slot?  I think maybe they should keep charging admission, but this time instead of a movie, they could just hand out Mountain Dew and meth and let these slack-jawed bumblef*cks pick ticks off each other for two hours.

Just last week the This is It people were crowing about their movie being the third-highest advanced ticket seller of 2009, and AEG (the concert company) predicted it would make $250 million in the first five days.  Domestically, it made $21.3 million for the weekend, which is less than Funny People made and that was considered a bomb.  It was the number one movie of the weekend, but it was also the only major release, so it basically had no competition. Worldwide five-day total: $101 million.  Which if you’re doing the math at home, is a lot less than $250 million.  Less than a third if my numbers serve me… carry the one… aw crap I hate myself.

Elsewhere, Paranormal Activity continued to kick ass and may eventually get to $100 million.  Couples Retreat and Law Abiding Citizen both held well, proving that mediocrity still holds sway, I guess.  Meanwhile, Where the Wild Things Are fell another 63.8%, meaning it’ll have to try to earn back its $100 million budget on DVD.

Astro Boy and Cirque Du Freak are bombs.  Guess kids are too young for a character that looks like Bob’s Big Boy, and maybe a kids movie with a French title wasn’t the best idea.  Shocking, I know.

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I haven’t seen Paranormal Activity yet so I don’t know how spoilery this original ending is in terms of the version that’s playing in theaters right now.  But I wouldn’t recommend watching the clip if you haven’t seen it yet.  Or if you have literally anything better to do, anything at all.  Even work.  Seriously, the rest of the movie isn’t all like this, is it?  At one point it’s just a stationary shot of a chick rocking back and forth for like four full minutes with nothing happening.  If I wanted watch people rock themselves back and forth all day I’d teach public school in L.A. Zing. RopeofSilicon sez:

I will say this, watching it on a computer is extremely uneventful and not at all indicative of the theatrical experience. On top of that, this ending is nowhere near as effective as the one in theaters.

I’ve heard the new ending is so scary that if you watch it you will literally die.