Bryan Bertino's The Strangers took $80m on a $9m budget when it was released in 2008, but, unusually for a successful and potentially franchise-worthy horror movie, studio Relativity haven't been quick to follow it up. But it looks like there is now some movement on the long-mooted Strangers 2, with the odd news that basketball star Amar'e Stoudemire has come aboard as an executive producer.

Knicks player Stoudemire, who has his fingers in a number of pies including fashion design, is apparently a massive fan of the first film. He's also dipped a toe in the waters of acting, playing himself in McGruber and attached to Anthony C Hall's drama Q. Could his involvement behind the scenes of Strangers 2 be a plan to get himself in front of the cameras as well?

The Strangers, if you missed it, is a genuinely scary home-invasion movie in which Liv Tyler and Scott Speedman are terrorised by three silent, masked assailants, whose agenda and history is never explained. Original director Bertino has relinquished the cameras to Laurent Briet this time, but has once again written the screenplay, which sees the strangers attacking a family of four in a labyrinthine trailer park.

Shock describe the sequel as broader in scope and more visceral than the first film - The Texas Chainsaw Massacre to the original's Halloween - but Boytano has reportedly (and wisely) flat-out refused to provide a back-story for the masked trio. If we learn who they are, they won't be bloody strangers, will they?

Casting and location scouting was taking place earlier this year, but there still doesn't seem to be an actual green light or start date.