Producers on Ring Sequel
At the New York City premiere of RING, presented as part of Lincoln Centers Next Generation of Film: Scary Movies festival, producer Walter F. Parkes shared his views on a potential U.S. RING follow-up. Were all superstitious in this business, and even the idea of talking about a sequelwere literally talking about 18 hours before the movies going to open! Parkes laughs. But if the film were to be successful, it would not be enough to just follow the further adventures of the [cursed] tape in the world. What we found in the making of this film, and from people seeing it, is that the idea of this haunted videotape kind of wears out rather quickly. Whats interesting are the deeper issues, the clues that are provided, the mystery that unfolds and how it affects the characters.
So I would only imagine that if we had the chance to do it again, we would have to find a story that operated on those different levels. In some waysand I know that one of the [Japanese] RING sequels was in fact a prequelI would be most interested in knowing how Samara came about, Parkes says, referring to the young girl at the center of RINGs mystery. ROSEMARYS BABY was so great in terms of dealing with the anticipation of having a child, and the fear of what that child might be, and I could imagine doing a prequel about the parents who gave birth to Samara, which would end up with the Morgan family taking her.
Whether RING director Gore Verbinski would return for a second round is also up in the air, and one has to wonder if the producers had any trepidation about hiring a director with only comedies under his belt for the first one. None whatsover, Parkes asserts. In fact, it was mostly because of something Laurie [MacDonald, Parkes wife and the other RING producer] found. A year and a half ago, Laurie came across a photo essay that Gore supervised for Vogue or Esquire, one of those two magazines. They went to three film directors and asked them to do these photo projects, and Gores was a kind of tribute to the visuals from [Hitchcocks] SPELLBOUND. They were black and white, very Dali-esque, and when we saw thatI dont think we had the RING script yet, but we said, Boy, he should really do a thriller next. Hes really good.
Courtesy of Fangoria
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