Paranormal Activity is being adapted into a live stage play.
Per The Hollywood Reporter, Simon Friend has purchased the licensing rights to turn Paramount’s Paranormal Activity into a stage play. The adaptation, which is described as being in “early development,” is written by Levi Holloway.
Friend previously helped adapt a number of other movies to the stage, including 2011’s The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel and 2012’s Life of Pi. He was also a producer on 2020’s The Father starring Anthony Hopkins, which was an adaptation of a 2012 play called Le Pére.
The history of Paramount’s Paranormal Activity franchise
Created by Oren Peli, Blumhouse Productions and Paramount Pictures’ Paranormal Activity franchise officially launched in 2007; although, the first Paranormal Activity movie didn’t get a nationwide release until 2009.
In Paranormal Activity, Katie Featherston and Micah Sloat play a couple who have recently moved into a new house in San Diego. When Katie begins vocalizing her worries that an evil presence from her childhood has come back to haunt them, Micah sets up cameras throughout the building to monitor for signs of paranormal activity while the two of them are sleeping.
Given that Paranormal Activity earned approximately $194.2 million at the worldwide box office off of a minuscule budget, a handful of sequels quickly followed. Paranormal Activity 2 arrived in 2010, followed by 2011’s Paranormal Activity 3, 2012’s Paranormal Activity 4, 2014’s Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones, and 2015’s Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension.
The most recent entry in the franchise, Paranormal Activity: Next of Kin, was released on Paramount+ in 2021. While reports surfaced in 2022 that an eighth Paranormal Activity film was in development, Peli refuted the claims. “Those are not real sequels,” he wrote on Twitter. “We have nothing to do with them, and do not know these people who claim to be making these films.”
