especially appeals to young audiences<\/a>, and Gen Z (ages 14 to 29) constitutes the majority of moviegoers today. Plus the flicks provide atmosphere. Scary movies go down much better blown up and in the dark than in bed and on a laptop. And, at the risk of sounding like a Nicole Kidman ad, the cathartic release after a good fright feels better in a packed group.\u00a0<\/p>\nThat\u2019s what makes \u201cParanormal Activity,\u201d which has already played London, Chicago, LA, San Francisco, DC and Boston, such an enticing prospect.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\t\t\tMore From\t\t\t\t\t\t\tJohnny Oleksinski<\/p>\n
Broadway desires all the same things that the movie industry does \u2014 enthusiastic young ticketbuyers, a product that sells itself, repeat business \u2014 while charging 10 times more for the privilege. Hollywood, for all its issues, is far, far better off today than stumbling Broadway is.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Could horror help?<\/p>\n
Thrillers actually were once a popular fixture on Midtown stages. Think Frederick Knott\u2019s \u201cWait Until Dark\u201d (1966), his \u201cDial M for Murder\u201d (1952) and Ira Levin\u2019s \u201cDeathtrap\u201d (1978). But they tapered off in the 1980s. The 1988 flop musical \u201cCarrie\u201d carried its bucket of pig blood with misplaced gusto, but New York Times critic Frank Rich wasn\u2019t having it. \u201cThe intended Stephen King pyrotechnics wouldn\u2019t frighten the mai tai drinkers at a Polynesian restaurant,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n
The movie \u201cWait Until Dark\u201d with Audrey Hepburn was based on a Broadway thriller. Courtesy Everett Collection<\/p>\n
Years later, a stage adaptation of \u201cThe Exorcist,\u201d directed by John Doyle, played LA in 2012, but the demon Pazuzu never made it to New York.<\/p>\n
More recently, in 2023, an original attempt at horror-theater called \u201cGrey House\u201d wasn\u2019t ready for primetime. <\/p>\n
The currently running \u201cStranger Things: The First Shadow\u201d has elements of fright, sure, but none are nearly as terrifying as how much money the show cost to produce.<\/p>\n
The Broadway show \u201cParanormal Activity\u201d has a new plot separate from the movies. Matthew Murphy<\/p>\n
Now comes \u201cParanormal Activity,\u201d directed by Felix Barrett, the co-director of \u201cSleep No More.\u201d <\/p>\n
It\u2019s a good ol\u2019 haunted house story. And if there\u2019s one thing Broadway knows, it\u2019s houses. Lest you cry \u201cUnoriginal!,\u201d the play, which includes Blumhouse\u2019s Jason Blum among its producers, has a new plot about a Chicago couple relocating to London rather than ripping off one of the seven films.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The first indie movie, which has a handheld, \u201cBlair Witch Project\u201d vibe, was made for a puny $15,000 and went on to gross $194 million, making it one of the most profitable films of all time. In that sense, it\u2019s a forefather of \u201cObsession.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cParanormal Activity\u201d is among the most profitable movies ever made. Blumhouse Productions<\/p>\n
\u201cParanormal\u201d was cleverly marketed \u2014 previewing for several weekends at midnight screenings on college campuses in towns like Ann Arbor, Michigan, before Paramount even announced a release date. Its unusual trailer was two minutes of freaked-out audience reactions<\/a>.<\/p>\nThe Broadway show will hope for that same sort of organic-ish success fueled by word of mouth. The ideal word being \u201cScary!\u201d The first four preview performances of the play were sold out, which is more than the last Tony Award winner for Best Musical, \u201cSchmigadoon!,\u201d can boast of its past week.<\/p>\n
Time will tell. First, this weekend comes the demons no priest yet has been able to fully exorcise: the critics.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It\u2019s spooooooky on Broadway.\u00a0 And not only because of the cost of a glass of wine. Fifteen of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":326352,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[207,157,5922,9,56,63,65,64],"class_list":["post-326351","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-broadway","tag-entertainment","tag-horror","tag-new-york","tag-ny","tag-nyc","tag-nyc-headlines","tag-nyc-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/326351","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=326351"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/326351\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/326352"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=326351"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=326351"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=326351"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}