Anyone who follows movie news knows that announced release dates are always – always - subject to change. We saw it last year with Jupiter Ascending, and again with Batman vs Superman’s year-long delay until summer 2016. Today brings news of three more films set to do the release date shuffle, with the flicks in question all being of the horrific variety, and all hailing from Paramount Pictures.

First up is the hotly anticipated (by Jason fans) reboot of Friday the 13th, gestating ever since New Line Cinema inexplicably decided not to release a sequel to a movie that grossed over $90 million on a budget of $19 million. With everyone’s favorite mama’s boy now back in the hands of the studio that brought us his first eight adventures, the process of developing a new Friday the 13th has been an oddly laborious one.

Paramount’s already put the kibosh on several potential script treatments, one of which apparently took the series down the “found footage” route. What Friday the 13th’s reboot will ultimately end up being about is still anyone’s guess; likely why the release date has just been bumped from November 13th, 2015 all the way to May 13th, 2016. This marks the second major release delay for the property. Given the box office success of the last entry, one must wonder why Paramount is so gun shy about pulling the trigger..



With Friday the 13th’s release date now open, Paramount has decided to slide Rings – the studio’s reboot of 2003′s The Ring – into that November 15th slot. Again, little is currently known about the plot of Rings, outside of the fact that it will once again concern an evil undead girl named Samara, and feature characters dying seven days after watching a mysterious cursed videotape.

It’s unclear how Samara will be able to find victims when VCRs and VHS tapes are now all but extinct, but to paraphrase Dr. Ian Malcolm: death finds a way. Then again, lead screenwriter Akiva Goldsman is said to be using the original Japanese Ring novel as inspiration for his new script, so it’s possible Rings might very well end up being a period piece.



Finally, the fifth Paranormal Activity film – sixth if you count last year’s Marked Ones spin-off – will depart from its previously announced March 13th, 2015 spot, and move down to the much more fitting date of October 23rd, 2015. Long a Halloween staple, the first four Paranormal Activity installments opened in the fall, usually in October.

Paramount inexplicably elected to release The Marked Ones in January 2014, an odd spot for an addition to a popular horror franchise. That film brought in the lowest box office take of the entire series to date, and it wouldn’t be out of the realm of possibility to think that being released so far from Halloween had something to do with that undesirable result. Perhaps Paramount came to the same conclusion when rescheduling the 3-D follow-up.

Paranormal Activity 5: The Ghost Dimension hits theaters on October 23rd, 2015. Rings premieres on November 13th, 2015. Friday the 13th‘s reboot debuts on May 13th, 2016.