Not to be outdone by Hannibal Classics and their just anouncedAmityville Legacy, the Weinsteins and Dimension films have weighed in with their long-promised **The Amityville Horror: The Lost Tapes.
This one has been in the works since before all the problems at MGM, and comes as part of the Weinsteins' recent deal with Miramax to revisit the "library" and produce sequels to established properties. Whether Hannibal's Legacy announcement prompted a sudden rush to get the Tapes underway, or whether it's just coincidence is anyone's guess.*
Legacy is based on an elderly Amityville tie-in novel (which has been plundered in the series twice before already), but The Lost Tapes is an original screenplay immediately following the first film and the 1976 Jay Anson novel. The tapes themselves constitute the modish "found footage" with which a TV news hack pieces together the paranormal activity at the haunted hill house, leading a team of journalists, researchers and clergy into danger they couldn't possibly have anticipated because they hadn't seen the other nine films.
Jason Blum (Insidious) is co-producing, and the current draft of the script is by Casey La Scala (an exec-producer on Donnie Darko) and Daniel Farrands (who wrote Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers). La Scala and Farrands will also direct, shooting this summer for a release in January 2012.
*The indie Hannibal Classics, by the way, seem perfectly within their rights to continue with The Amityville Legacy. The name "Amityville" is fair game because it's a real place; they just can't use "The Amityville Horror".