If you have been waiting for Rings, the restart of the American horror film franchise based off of the Japanese horror film Ringu, you will have a bit longer to wait. The film, which was scheduled to open next month right before Halloween, has been pushed by Paramount back to February 3, 2017.
This is the third time that Paramount has shifted the film on its schedule. Originally the studio had announced the film for release in November 2015 and later moved it to April 2016 before moving it again to its just vacated October 2016 date.
While the fall, especially October, has been the traditional time to get a horror film into theaters, there have been a number of genre releases across the calendar this past year that have done well. Moving Rings to next February shouldn’t really harm its chances at the box office. The move does leave Ouija: Origin of Evil as the sole horror film to be opening at Halloween.
While some would be quick to scoff that the franchise’s central element of a cursed VHS video tape being fairly antiquated in today’s age of high definition blu-ray and streaming options, there are still a number of adherents and fans of the older, analogue format. Think of them as the vinyl record collectors of home video media. So it is possible that a story could be constructed that would involve that group. A while the filmmakers have stated that the movie would involve current technology, the studio’s story synopsis does suggest that it won’t be straying too far from its roots.
A new chapter in the beloved RING horror franchise. 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…
Rings stars Matilda Lutz, Vincent D’Onofrio, Alex Roe, Johnny Galecki, Aimee Teegarden and Bonnie Morgan.
