Hollywood Ink: Paramountal Activity

· Paramount, the studio that shepherded Oren Peli's Paranormal Activity from festival novelty thriller to $107 million horror phenomenon, has stood by their man, acquiring distribution rights to follow-up Area 51. (This comes despite a NY Times story that suggested the studio had passed, and the $10 million sci-fi feature had no takers.) Like Activity, it employs staged found footage to tell the story of three teens who set out to the extraterrestrial-harboring air force base in Nevada; also like Activity, it relies heavily on the powers of suggestion, proving the fake alien autopsy you don't see is far more chilling than the one you can. [Variety]

More to come in Ink: Piven's back on the big screen; This Is It comes home; Ride Along with Ice Cube.

· James Cameron will be joined by his Avatar stars Zoe Saldana and Sam Worthington for a live webcast on MTV Movies blog, where they'll answer fan-submitted questions. We've already put in our request for Cameron to sing "Over the Rainbow." Fingers crossed! [Variety]

· Jeremy Piven and Kate Walsh have signed on to star in indie drama Waska, about a father who loses a son during the magical time of the first snowfall of the year. They are currently shooting in Calgary, which means it's going to be a miserably cold December for Piven and Walsh. Hug it out, Waska bitches. (For some reason, THR ran this same story but made Thomas Dekker's involvement the headline. Someone's PR team deserves a muffin basket this morning!) [Variety]

· This Is It will come to DVD and Blu-ray Jan. 26th, after the holiday gift-giving season as was expected -- thereby preventing countless instances of family members tearing open packages on Christmas morning and asking disappointedly, "This is it?" [THR]

· Screenwriter Jason Mantzoukas is rewriting Ride Along, a comedy that's been circulating in Hollywood so long it's actually chiseled into tablets, for Ice Cube (or as I like to call him, Ice Cub) to star. [THR]