Like their principal villains, horror movie franchises rarely die.  If there’s not a new sequel to be made, there’s a remake in the works.  If the remake didn’t take off, go with a reboot that’s loosely connected to the original franchise.  As such, though it’s been nine years since the last installment, it appears that The Ring 3 is finally moving forward.  Director Gore Verbinski’s 2002 American remake of the Japanese horror film The Ring was a massive crossover hit, grossing $249.3 million at the box office.  A few years later, Ringu director Hideo Nakata was brought in to helm the 2005 sequel The Ring Two.  Though the overall response was significantly less enthusiastic, the pic drew in a respectable $161.5 million worldwide.

A third The Ring film has been discussed for some time, but the project never gained any real momentum.  Now, however, Paramount has decided it’s time to move forward in earnest, bringing in F. Javier Guiterrez to take the helm.  More after the jump.

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Per Heat Vision, producers Walter Parkes and Laurie MacDonald have signed F. Javier Gutierrez to direct The Ring 3.  Gutierrez made his feature directorial debut with the sci-fi thriller Tres Dias (aka Before the Fall), and he’s attached to direct Relativity’s The Crow remake.

It’s unclear what the story of The Ring 3 would involve, but one presumes the videotape aspect of the original film will be updated to reflect modern technology.  Hopefully this doesn’t mean Paramount is going the “found footage” or “viral YouTube video” route.  Transformers: Dark of the Moon and Transformers: Age of Extinction scribe Ehren Kruger contributed to the script for The Ring and penned The Ring Two on his own, but it’s unclear if he’ll be asked to return for this third entry in the franchise.

It’s been a while since The Ring was “a thing” in our pop culture, so I’ll be interested to see how the current audiences respond to this sequel.  Will Paramount go with a more reboot-heavy sequel in order to avoid excluding those unfamiliar with The Ring, or will The Ring 3 still heavily carry the mythology of Samara?  Time will tell, I suppose.

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