"The allure of good thrillers is to get that adrenaline rush, to be on the edge of your seat without actually being in danger. The best ones are equal parts intellectual exercise, emotional exercise and visceral experience. They engage your mind and involve you intellectually, but the payoff is the scareˇthe scream. I guess that's why as filmmakers, we look for them, and as moviegoers, we can't wait to see them," Parkes comments.

To direct the movie, the first and only person the producers approached was Gore Verbinski, who had made his feature film directorial debut on DreamWorks' offbeat comedy hit "Mouse Hunt." "The main reason we chose Gore was that he is just a consummate visualist," Parkes says. "Having worked with him before, we felt his sensibility was right for this and that he would be intrigued by both the story possibilities and the visual possibilities. He has the expertise and the artistry to create images that in and of themselves can involve you and truly scare you."

Verbinski relates, "The first time I watched the original 'Ringu' was on a VHS tape that was probably seven generations down. It was really poor quality, but actually that added to the mystique, especially when I realized that this was a movie about a videotape. There is something about that image of a seemingly innocuous videotapeˇjust sitting thereˇunlabeled. If you are aware of the myth, the object itself becomes both tempting and haunting."

"There are unmarked videos in everyone's house," MacDonald notes. "There are always those unlabeled tapes where you can't remember what's on them; and the television is another thing that is part of everyone's life. The idea that these two everyday items could be at the center of this, could lead you to your death, can really get under your skin."

Verbinski expounds, "In 'The Ring,' there is a tape, seemingly like any of those unmarked tapes, but if you watch it the phone rings, and then there's the warning that you have seven days left to live. So it is not enough that you will die; for seven days you know you are going to die. There is that desperation as you get closer to the end and start to feel the walls closing in on you. And that, I think, brings a uniqueness to the horror.