James Wan’s Paranormal Activity Reboot Release Delay Officially Restores Franchise Tradition

James Wan’s Paranormal Activity film has officially been delayed, but this shakeup means it will restore a long-time tradition for the horror franchise.

Wan is no stranger to the horror genre, having created The Conjuring franchise, directed Saw and Insidious, and produced Annabelle, The Curse of La Llorona, M3GAN, Lee Cronin’s The Mummy and Backrooms, among many others. Now he’s joining the Paranormal Activity franchise as a producer of the eighth film.

Variety reports that the next Paranormal Activity movie will be released on October 22, 2027, instead of May 21, a delay of five months. Aside from the 2014 spinoff Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones, every sequel in the main series of films has been released in October, which means this change by Paramount ensures that a Halloween release schedule continues.

Joining Wan as producers on the reboot are Jason Blum, Oren Peli, Steven Schneider, Dan Slater, Cody Calahan, Michael Clear, Judson Scott and Alayna Glasthal, with Ian Tuason serving as director. The filmmaker previously helmed several short films and made his feature-length directorial debut with the 2025 horror flick Undertone.

Tuason is following in the footsteps of previous Paranormal Activity directors Peli, Tod Williams, Henry Joost, Ariel Schulman, Christopher Landon and Gregory Plotkin. The franchise began in 2007; since then it has collectively grossed around $900 million at the box office.

Its critical reception has been much more mixed, to say the least. The very first Paranormal Activity is the only film to earn a Certified Fresh score on Rotten Tomatoes, where it’s currently at 82%. After that, the ratings have precipitously dropped, with Paranormal Activity 3 receiving the next-highest score at 68% and Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension having the lowest score at 16%.

Across eight films so far, Paranormal Activity has leaned on the found footage format to tell supernatural stories of families who get haunted and murdered by a demon. The most recent installment was the reboot Paranormal Activity: Next of Kin, which was released on Paramount+ instead of in theaters because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

This means that Tuason and Wan’s upcoming movie will bring the franchise back to the big screen. Chase Yi, Sonia Mena and Maya da Costa are leading the cast.

After Paramount-Skydance acquired Warner Bros., the entertainment company promised that it would release 30 films in theaters next year–and one of them will be a new Paranormal Activity sequel. Fans might have to wait a little bit longer to see it, but its new release date is a lot more fitting for spooky season than the spring. It doesn’t have any major competition on that day, but the previous week will see the highly anticipated release of The Mummy: Book of the Dead on October 15.

The untitled Paranormal Activity film will be released in theaters on Friday, October 22, 2027.