| Paramount has picked up the distribution rights to Area 51, Oren Peli’s follow-up to his smash-hit debut, Paranormal Activity. Peli – who won’t discuss Area 51 in interviews at all, even going so far as to not mention its name or even say that he’s working on another movie at the moment – wrapped on the $5m sci-fi horror, which will follow the same found-footage lines as Paranormal Activity, three weeks ago. There’s no word yet on when the new movie, which we imagine will be more effects-heavy and ambitious than the one-location Paranormal Activity, will be ready. But iwt will be sometime in 2010. Of course, there’s no guarantee that it will tap into the zeitgeist the way Peli’s debut did; nor, indeed, that it will be any cop. But Paramount, which released Activity in the States, is willing to take that gamble, and with such a small budget to repay, it’s a smart gamble even if Peli turns out to be the movie equivalent of a one-hit wonder. Area 51, as far as we can tell, will tell the tale of three teenagers who team up to infiltrate the infamous Area 51 base, on the search for extra-terrestrials. Needless to say, they film the whole thing, rather than doing what Empire would do, which is either drop the camera at the first sign of trouble, or spend the entire time with our thumb over the lens, while doing bad Christopher Walken impressions. Now that’s a movie we’d like to see…
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