Ouija, the teen horror from first-time director Stiles White, may not have spoken to the critics much, but managed to manifest a healthy box-office haul. It beat John Wick to the top of the charts on its opening weekend last October, and currently boasts a worldwide haul just under $100m. You might think a sequel was inevitable. And you'd be right! Universal has broken out the board again.
The first film starred Olivia Cooke, and White himself wrote the screenplay with his regular cohort Juliet Snowden (Boogeyman, Knowing, The Possession). In an intriguing change, however, the sequel will be working from a screenplay by Mike Flanagan and Jeff Howard, who were behind last year's excellent Oculus. Perhaps this will be one of those rare occasions when a follow-up drastically improves on its predecessor. It's unclear at this stage whether Flanagan is interested in directing Ouija 2.
Elsewhere the roster is the same, with Universal joining forces with Michael Bay's Platinum Dunes, Jason Blum's Blumhouse and toy company Hasbro. Incredibly, despite its sinister reputation and its ancient origins as something supposedly genuine, the version of the Ouija board most people know today is actually a variant of a commercial board game. Hasbro own it. Transformers, Cabbage Patch Kids, My Little Pony, Ouija. Which is the greater of these evils?
Director and cast have still to be thrashed out through the medium of an independently ambulatory glass with poor spelling. But the release date is already in place: Ouija 2 arrives on the Halloween-appropriate October 21, 2016.