The Grudge is a scrappy franchise, in many ways. The series started with two dirt-cheap Japanese direct-to-video movies, made over nine days, and has expanded into a lengthy theatrical franchise. The American movies aren’t quite as good, especially now that they’re going to “reboot” the franchise. Yes, Hollywood is rebooting a remake.
Details are a bit thin, but we do know who’s writing it. In fact, it’s the same guy writing the equally inexplicable Jacob’s Ladder remake, according to Deadline:
Ghost House Pictures and Good Universe will relaunch the franchise, and they’ve set Midnight Meat Train scribe Jeff Buhler to draft the reboot. The new one will be produced by Sam Raimi, Rob Tapert and Taka Ichise, with Roy Lee, Doug Davison, Joe Drake and Nathan Kahane exec producing.
Yes, Sam Raimi is involved, because apparently Sam Raimi wants to be impossible to figure out. Apparently this won’t be set in Japan, you know, because Americans hate confusing foreign places, and will follow a CW actress as she finds ghosts. We’re just guessing, here. Maybe she’ll find gnomes instead!
Joking aside, there’s nothing wrong with making a haunted house movie, but realistically, this thing will cost less than $15 million and will be released on a weekend in October. It’ll easily make its money back, even if it’s not a hit. So maybe, Hollywood, just this once, you might consider writing an original script, and giving it a new title?