Mike Fleming

In the first of what will be multiple co-productions between The Weinstein Company and Miramax on sequels of films that the Weinsteins produced at their old haunt, Dimension Films and Miramax are teaming on the production of The Amityville Horror: The Lost Tapes. The film is based on a script by Casey La Scala and Daniel Farrands, who will direct a film that will shoot this summer for release Jan. 27, 2012. The deal was announced today by TWC co-chairman Bob Weinstein and Miramax CEO Mike Lang.

The pic uses the genre staple of “found footage” to tap into the mythology of the book that informed the original haunted house movie, which dates back to 1976, when George Lutz moves his family into and out of a house where the previous tenants were murdered by their son, Ronald DeFeo, who claimed he was possessed. “An ambitious female television news intern, on the verge of breaking the most famous haunted house case in the world, leads a team of journalists, clergymen and paranormal researchers into an investigation of the bizarre events that will come to be known as The Amityville Horror, only to unwittingly open a door to the unreal that she may never be able to close,” is the logline. Paranormal Activity’s Jason Blum is producing with La Scala and Farrands, and Bob and Harvey Weinstein are the exec producers.

This will be the first of a bunch of sequels done between the two companies, which is how they buried the hatchet. The Weinsteins held certain rights to their original franchises, and Miramax’s Lang and the TWC partners embraced this as a way to exploit the properties and eliminate the acrimony.