Paramount & Platinum Dunes Strike Deal

People love Michael Bay. By people, I mean studio executives. I say that because he makes them money and lots of it. Don’t take that remark as an insult because it isn’t. His Transformers films (with a third installment on the way for July 2011) have a combined gross of $1.5 billion.

There’s also Platinum Dunes (run by Bay, Andrew Form and Brad Fuller) which has revived two horror franchises (Friday the 13^th and Texas Chainsaw Massacre) with their biggest one yet on the way next year (Nightmare on Elm Street).

Now comes word from Variety that Paramount has struck a “First Look” deal with the production company with the intention of moving past the horror genre. That doesn’t mean they’ll get completely out of that business. Those films are cheap to produce and turn out a nice profit. No point in giving that up.

Of course, the two first projects being set up under this new deal appear to be in said genre. The first is The Butcherhouse Chronicles being described as “The Breakfast Club in a haunted house” with Stephen Susco typing away on his laptop. The other is Property of the State concerning a parole officer endangering a former criminal trying to his life back on track.

Curious to see what we'll see from those non-horror related projects that they allude to.