Shannyn Sossamon Joins the Returning James Ransone for 'Sinister 2'

Typical of nearly every Blumhouse-produced horror, 2012's Sinister turned out to be a small budget dynamo. On a budget of only $3M it scared up more than $80M, and a sequel was quickly ordered up with Ciaran Foy (Citadel) drafted to direct with prior director Scott Derrickson, now busy on Marvel's Doctor Strange, co-writing the script with C. Robert Cargill. As production kicks off in Chicago the cast has begun to be revealed with the return of James Ransone and a new face in Shannyn Sossamon.

Deadline reports that Ransone will be back reprising his role as the helpful deputy sheriff from the first film, which sounds like the supernatural horrors will be sticking to the same neighborhood. Sossamon, best known for starring in A Knight's Tale, 40 Days & 40 Nights, and The Rules of Attraction, will play the protective mother of two 9-year-old twin boys in a rural home that has been marked for death. It'll be her biggest role in years after spending time working in television. As a huge fan of hers I'm hoping this is just the start of greater things to come.

Sinister 2 opens next year on August 21st 2015.

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'Sinister 2' Gets a Director in Ciaran Foy

Scott Derrickson won't be directing the sequel to 2012's horror smash, Sinister, just as we don't know if Ethan Hawke will be returning to star in it. Not that either need to be in place for it to be a hit thanks to the marketing geniuses over at Blumhouse, who turned the $3M film into a $87M success. Now Derrickson has taken to Twitter to reveal that Ciaran Foy, director of the low-budget film Citadel, is the guy to helm Sinister 2 when production begins this summer....

"Sinister 2 news! The script, written by me & @massawyrm, will be directed by the talented Ciaran Foy. I will produce w/Jason Blum @blumhouse"

There are still no plot details or any indication whether it will follow the same path as the original. Hawke played a true crime novelist who moved his family into a home where terrible murders took place, only to unleash a demonic force after watching tapes of the killings.

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'Sinister' sequel officially in the works

While most of the mega studios scramble around spending hundreds of millions of dollars on a film hoping to just break even, producer Jason Blum has made an art of turning a profit out of practically no budget at all. As one of the minds behind the found footage Paranormal Activity franchise, Insidious, and 2011's horror hit Sinister, nobody's been more in the black than him. Insidious Chapter 2 is coming later this year, newly bumped a few weeks down to September 20th, and now a sequel to Sinister is in the works.

Deadline reports that Blum will produce Sinister 2, bringing back Scott Derrickson and C. Robert Cargill to pen the script. Only this time Derrickson won't be taking on the directing reins, meaning a new helmer will have to be found. Assuming this develops into a series like Paranormal Activity, the director isn't going to mean much, anyway.

The original film starred Ethan Hawke as a true crime novelist who moves his family into a new home, always a bad idea, and discovers a box of home movies of all the murdered families that have lived there. No need to spoil what happens next, but let's just say it's really gruesome and quite sinister. Whomp! No word on if Hawke will come back, but I'm betting he at least makes a cameo to set up the story of the next set of victims.

Insidious made close to $100M on a budget around $1.5M, while Sinister hauled in $87M at around a $3M cost. At those numbers there's every reason for Blum to expand his horror empire and keep it going for years.

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