Paramount Picks Up AREA 51

The following info is more of a ‘duh!’ info. But it wouldn’t be announced in this manner if the movie that filmmaker Oren Peli made wasn’t such a box office phenomenon. As we know, the genius behind one of the scariest films of all time, PARANORMAL ACTIVITY, which earned $106 Million last month, was making his next film AREA 51 which centers around three teenagers whose curiosity leads them to the legendary and mysterious Area 51 Air Force base deep in the Nevada desert. AREA 51 will, like PARANORMAL ACTIVITY employ a “found footage” narrative strategy. Check out the plot and script review. According to Variety, the $5 Million budget movie, starring unknown actors Reid Warner, Darrin Bragg and Ben Rovner, has been filmed and it’s currently in post-production and it has a familiar distributor…

Paramount Pictures which distributed PARANORMAL ACTIVITY is also going to be the distributor for AREA 51. If I were Peli, I don’t know if I’d like Paramount to help me out again because the lack of faith that it had on my previous film. At one point, Paramount was thinking of remaking PARANORMAL ACTIVITY but then changed its mind after test screenings prove that the movie scared the hell out of audiences just as it was.

AREA 51 is produced by Jason Blum under his Blumhouse Productions banner, with Room 101’s Steven Schneider and IM Global chief Stuart Ford serving as executive producers. The film was co-financed by Aramid Entertainment Fund and Incentive Filmed Entertainment, with IM Global handling worldwide sales and CAA co-repping the title in the U.S.
The report says “Paramount made a high seven-figure to co-finance the film with Incentive Filmed Entertainment and the Aramid Entertainment Fund as well as any potential sequels at the recent American Film Market”,
Remember that talk of PARANORMAL ACTIVITY 2 that Paramount wanted to have badly? well, the article says that’s exactly what Peli will be working on next, once again with Paramount as his channel.