Ouija, the teen horror from first-time director Stiles White, may not have spoken to the critics much, but managed to manifest a healthy box-office haul. It beat John Wick to the top of the charts on its opening weekend last October, and managed a worldwide gross just under $100 million. A sequel was inevitable, and while we already knew that the Oculus team of Mike Flanagan and Jeff Howard had agreed to proved the screenplay, the news this morning is that Flanagan has also now signed on to direct{
Adding further Oculus DNA is Annalise Basso, who played the young Karren Gillan in that film and will take one of Ouija 2's leading roles. The plot will revolve around the same haunted board as the first Ouija, with Basso's character unwisely using it to attempt contact with her recently deceased father.
Elsewhere the roster is the same, with Universal joining forces with Michael Bay's Platinum Dunes, Jason Blum's Blumhouse and toy company Hasbro. Incredibly, despite its sinister reputation and its ancient origins as something supposedly genuine, the version of the Ouija board most people know today is actually a variant of a commercial board game. Hasbro own it. Transformers, Cabbage Patch Kids, My Little Pony, the Ouija board. Which is the greater of these evils?
Ouija 2 already has a release date in place, arriving on the Halloween-appropriate October 21, 2016. Flanagan's first post-Oculus horror, **Before I Wake, is out in the States next month but doesn't yet have a slot in the UK.