A fourth American Grudge film has been developing for some time at Sam Raimi's Ghost House production company. Now it seems close to actually happening, with the news that the film has found its director in Nicolas Pesce. And with that comes a casting wishlist: Andrea Riseborough is apparently the number one choice to take the lead.
Pesce previously directed The Eyes Of My Mother, making yet another new Grudge a more intriguing prospect than it otherwise might have been. He's currently at work on a new draft of the screenplay with Riseborough's potential character a single mother who's also a police detective.
The Grudge, like the curse that title refers to, keeps on being reborn. Beginning with short films and two Japanese TV movies in 2000, director Takashi Shimizu spun his Ju-On tale into two theatrical Japanese features in 2003. He then helmed a Hollywood remake of the first starring Sarah Michelle Gellar in 2004, and stayed around for 2006's The Grudge 2, which again featured Gellar but was a stand-alone movie not based on Ju-On 2. Following this so far?
Then in 2009, we have two non-Shimizu Japanese entires in Old Lady in White and Girl in Black (released together as Ju-On: White Ghost / Black Ghost), plus the American DTV Grudge 3, directed by Toby Wilkins, starring Shawneee Smith from the Saw films and Counsellor Deanna Troi. Back in Japan, Ochiai Masayuki wrote and directed The Beginning Of The End in 2014. And most recently we've had Kōji Shiraishi's Sadako Vs. Kayako, pitting Ju-On's principal chalk-faced, lank-haired female ghoul against that of the equally unwieldy Ring franchise.
Jeff Buhler (who wrote the Clive Barker adaptation The Midnight Meat Train) produced early drafts of the script that Pesce has now taken on, which is thought to be a reboot rather than a remake or specific sequel. But given the overlapping and repeated material running through all the films already, it doesn't make a great deal of difference. Riseborough has yet to actually sign any deals, and is also considering a role in an Amazon-Sky miniseries Zero, Zero, Zero, for Gomorrah's Stefano Sollima.
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