Three years after it initially announced a reboot of The Grudge franchise, Ghost House Pictures is finally taking another step forward with its planned revival. According to , he production company has set Nicolas Pesce to take the reins their reboot. Pesce will rewrite the existing screenplay penned by Jeff Buhler (The Midnight Meat Train) and also direct the film. Sam Raimi, Rob Tapert, and Taka Ichise are on board to produce.
Nicolas Pesce burst onto the horror scene last year with the critically-acclaimed The Eyes of My Mother. He is currently in post-production on the psychological thriller Piercing. He is expected to begin reworking Buhler’s script once work on Piercing is completed.
There’s no word at this time as to whether or not this new film is expected to carry on from the previous three Grudge films produced by Ghost House, although I imagine it will completely strike out on its own. After all, this year’s own legacy sequel to a Japanese horror remake, Rings, didn’t fare to well at the box office. Not did last year’s attempted revival of the Blair Witch franchise. Besides, I really can’t see them wanting to do a theatrical follow-up to a DTV sequel, even in a loose way.
Given all of the different narrative turns that the original Japanese series, Ju-On, has taken over the years, there are a lot of possibilities for this redo. Combined with the American trilogy, this supernatural terror saga has spanned a dozen films to date, with numerous different story paths and combinations taken. If Pesce and Buhler have found an interesting new take on the mythos, we could be in for a treat. I wasn’t the biggest fan of Eyes of My Mother, but there’s no denying that Pesce is a talented visualist and filmmaker. As long as this Grudge revival avoid retreading a lot of the same ground as the bigger previous entries in this franchise, we should be in good hands.
