Early in the 2000s, Japanese horror took off, with ghost stories like The Ring and The Grudge. And, like any horror movie, sequels soon followed. Oddly, though, both The Ring and The Grudge are skipping the seemingly obligatory entry where they go to space and are instead going head to head.
There’s little information about the plot, but this is a crossover more credible than most. Both stories revolve around curses; in The Ring, an enraged teenager hides inside a videotape and kills anybody who doesn’t force someone else to watch the tape in seven days, while The Grudge revolves around a curse in a Tokyo home that spreads to wherever it kills. In other words, sooner or later these two angry ghosts are going to be after the same person.
That said, don’t expect the American version of this spectral cage match to happen for a while. Rings, the third movie in the American take on the series, has been delayed for nearly a year from its original November release date, and while The Grudge was supposed to receive a reboot, there appears to have been little forward motion. That said, Universal owns the remake rights to The Grudge and is helping to fund this movie, so there might be some interest yet. As for the Japanese version, it hits theaters in its home country in June, with a U.S. release likely next October.
