According to Bloody Disgusting, Paramount’s recently-announced continuation of The Ring series, titled Rings, is expected to be a prequel about the origin of Samara’s reign of terror.
The film reportedly takes place before the creation of the unmarked tape which terrorized the characters of The Ring and The Ring Two. This begs the question of whether this is a pure retelling of Samara’s tragic childhood, as we experienced briefly via flashback in The Ring? It can also be presumed that the recently-cast Matilda Lutz will potentially be playing a teenaged Samara.
The Japanese Ringu films, from which The Ring franchise sprang, concluded their four-film cycle with 2000’s prequel titled Ring 0: Birthday, which takes place 30 years before the original film and tells the story of how Samara’s counterpart Sadako was murdered at age 19 and became cursed.
Released in 2002, Gore Verbinksi’s The Ring was an English-language remake of Hideo Nakata’s 1998 supernatural thriller, Ringu, which told the story of a videotape of ghostly imagery that causes anyone who watches it to die seven days later. Ringu was followed by three Japanese sequels, while the Verbinski version received its own 2005 sequel directed by Nakata, The Ring Two.
F. Javier Gutierrez (Before the Fall) is directing Rings, with Academy Award-winning screenwriter Akiva Goldsman rewriting the current sequel draft by David Loucka. It is set for a release this November 13, 2015.
