The found footage genre (which I think ultimately gets tossed around for a lot of dissimilar films) has been strongly revitalized in the last week and a half, as Paranormal Activity 3 has brought in over $100m worldwide already. The molecular budgets and occasional huge returns means that flops like Apollo 18 won’t put a dent in a genre that is likely here to stay, and more Cloverfield-like efforts may find themselves empowered once again as an unintentional by-product. It’s getting easier to point to fake-low-resolution footage films that are successful than trying to pitch the new Cloverfield. Fixed-camera horror films are obviously not the same as other films that purport to be shot on handicams and be POV, but the studios often ignore little distinctions like that.
In any event (that lead got well-buried!) Category Six, which New Line recently picked up for about 300k last week, sounds much more like a Cloverfield than a Paranormal Activity as it’s a cellphone-footage film about a large scale disaster. John Swetman wrote the script that details the harrowing story of a group of high schoolers that wave cellphones around while being chased by the biggest tornado in recorded history. So yes, Twister in puke-vision with a more annoying cast of characters!
There’s not much in the way of details beyond that, but I expect this one to get an actual greenlight pretty quickly.
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