PARAMOUNT has hired F. Javier Gutiérrez to direct the third movie in The Ring series, marking the Spanish filmmaker’s second studio genre franchise after Relativity and The Weinstein Co. tapped him to reboot The Crow in another hotly contested helmer search. The Ring threequel is being produced by Walter Parkes and Laurie MacDonald. It’s the latest installment of the $400M-grossing horror franchise first launched stateside by Gore Verbinski in 2002 with The Ring and its sequel The Ring 2, both starring Naomi Watts as a woman caught in the clutches of a cursed video tape. The Japanese original Ringu, directed by Hideo Nakata and adapted from the novel by Kōji Suzuki, spawned its own series of prequel/sequels and spin-off films and led a wave of J-horror Hollywood remakes throughout the 2000s. Gutiérrez earned genre cred on the international scene with his shorts Brazil and La habitacion de Norman, followed by his 2008 debut feature Before the Fall (Tres Días).(JEN JAMATO, DEADLINE)
