PARANORMAL ACTIVITY Director Oren Peli Travels to AREA 51

With “Paranormal Activity” trickling its way into theaters over the past few weeks for midnight shows, and garnering some impressive word-of-mouth and ticket sales per theater numbers, helmer Oren Peli is ready to start production on his next project focused around the mythological Area 51 base.  More of the new scaremeister’s sci-fi venture after the jump.

Variety reports that Peli will begin production next week, and is reuniting with his producer from “Paranormal” Jason Blum, on the new film which is said to follow 3 teenagers whose curiousity leads them to Nevada where the Nellis Air Force Base is the supposed home to Area 51.  The new film is planned to be modestly budgeted at $5 million, however that’s an incredibly significant upgrade over the reported $11,000 that went in to the making of “Paranormal Activity.”

It’s also reported that Peli is going to use the same ‘found-footage’ type of filmmaking for this new project that worked to perfection with “Paranormal.”  More so than any horror film I can recall, “Paranormal Activity” had an incredible impact on my psyche, and a large part of that had to do with the found-footage type of approach despite never saying that what was being presented was real.  I can’t imagine that this new Area 51 film will have the same kind of effect if only because the possibility of ghosts is a more frightening subject than the current existence of aliens on Earth.  I anticipate something more in line with “Cloverfield,” however any artist that can do what they did with “Paranormal Activity” certainly has my attention.