A tremor went out across the internet on Wednesday when the first official trailer for upcoming sequel/franchise reboot Rings crawled from the well. The less superstitious among you can watch it below.
Paramount are billing Rings as a direct sequel to their last encounter with that cursed videotape in 2005’s The Ring 2, with the hope of kicking off a franchise with annual releases in the Halloween slot, previously occupied by the Saw series and then, Paranormal Activity.
Bonnie Morgan (The Devil Inside, Fear Clinic) has stepped into the role of Samara, with The Big Bang Theory’s Johnny Galecki continuing his horror reinvention at the head of the film’s cast. They are joined by Scream 4’s Aimee Teegarden, Alex Roe (The 5th Wave) and Laura Wiggins (Dance of the Dead). F. Javier Gutiérrez (Before the Fall) directs the film, which will land in US cinemas on 28th October. It narrowly misses Halloween in the UK, where audiences will have to wait until November 4th.
In Rings, A young woman becomes worried about her boyfriend when he explores a dark subculture surrounding a mysterious videotape said to kill the watcher seven days after he has viewed it. She sacrifices herself to save her boyfriend and in doing so makes a horrifying discovery: there is a ‘movie within the movie’ that no one has ever seen before…
It seems one particular detail of the Ring mythology has been updated for a new audience, with the infamous VHS tape having now been digitised. Kids today, eh?
Words: Kevan Farrow (@KevanX)
