Jason Blum says 'enough already' to 'Paranormal Activity' franchise, calls latest sequel 'terrible'

Jason Blum believes it's time to say goodbye to his longest-serving original horror franchise. 

Speaking to Variety over the weekend, Blum, the founder of horror production icon Blumhouse and a key player in several major scary franchise over the last two decades, said that he's ready for Paranormal Activity to come to an end after the previous installment, Next of Kin, went straight to streaming last year.

“It has been enough already. That last Paranormal Activity movie was terrible,” Blum said. “With Halloween, we only had the rights to three movies, so we said: Halloween Ends! It ends for Blumhouse, at least. With other things, you just have this feeling it’s time to put them to bed. It would come back if some director I love, like Scott Derrickson, said: 'I have a great idea for a Paranormal Activity movie.' But it’s not something I want to do [at the moment].”

In the same Variety report, there was mention of another Paranormal Activity film arriving sometime next year, but even as those reports resurfaced and an eighth film in the series was listed on both IMDb and Wikipedia, franchise creator Oren Peli took to Twitter Monday to confirm no official sequels are happening at the moment. 

"There are stories coming out about sequels in the works," Peli wrote. "Those are listed on IMDB as Paranormal Activity 8, remake, etc. Those are not real sequels. We have nothing to do with them, and do not know these people who claim to be making these films."

Blum struck gold in the 2000s when he began working with Peli to get the first Paranormal Activity film to a wider audience. A low-budget, found footage horror film about a couple who investigates a supernatural presence in their home, it eventually became one of the most profitable movies ever made, and helped drive Blumhouse's eventual method of making small-budget genre films with a big potential for return on investment. Sequels just kept coming after that, until a six-year break in the franchise between 2015's The Ghost Dimension and 2021's Next of Kin, which skipped theaters amid the pandemic and premiered on Paramount+. Now, Blum seems keen on extending the next break in Paranormal Activity films indefinitely, unless he sees a compelling new take to reinvigorate the brand. 

In the meantime, he's focused on the impending release of Halloween Ends, a first-look deal with Halloween franchise star Jamie Lee Curtis, and of course, the new legacy sequel to The Exorcist from Halloween 2018 director David Gordon Green. 

“We are getting ready to make it," Blum said of the sequel, which will feature a return by original Exorcist star Ellen Burstyn. "Hopefully, we will do the same thing with The Exorcist that we did with Halloween – make it in a way that’s fresh and worth revisiting. And feels different enough so that people are happy we did it."

So, Paranormal Activity seems dormant for now, but as all horror fans know, franchises never really end. They just lie in wait, looking for the right moment to rise from the grave.

Looking for more thrills and chills? SYFY and USA's Chucky returns for its second season in October, and SYFY's haunted house thriller SurrealEstate is also coming back for a second season. Check out Season 1 of Chucky on Peacock, and revisit SurrealEstate on the SYFY app.