‘Paranormal Activity’ May Have Found Its New Director

Highlights

• Director: Canadian filmmaker Ian Tuason is in final negotiations to helm the new Paranormal Activity film.
• Background: Tuason gained fame for creating VR horror shorts before his feature debut with Undertone.
• Influence: The original Paranormal Activity is among Tuason’s top three scariest films.
• Style: His film Undertone utilizes a “found audio” technique, similar to the original film’s approach.

At the top of December, Paramount revealed it was doing another Paranormal Activity flick with James Wan on hand as producer, and now they might’ve landed a director for the gig.

Per the Hollywood Reporter, Canadian filmmaker Ian Tuason is in final negotiations to reboot the found footage horror series. If you haven’t heard of him before, that’s the point; he gained popularity making VR horror shorts online before tackling his first feature film Undertone. That film premiered at a Canadian film festival earlier this year and was so popular it launched a bidding war that may see it get released by A24.

Should Tuason be signed on, it’ll bring things full circle for him, as he’s deemed the first Paranormal Activity one of the top three movies that scare him behind The Blair Witch Project and the original Exorcist. There’s some additional overlap between Paranormal and Undertone in that he’s called the latter “found audio” rather than a found footage movie, owing to its central storytelling gimmick of audio files about a couple being possessed, similar to Paranormal’s recordings of a couple being haunted by a ghost in the house.

Whether directing duties go to Tuason or someone else, we’ll have more on this Paranormal Activity reboot as news emerges.

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