There are certain things in life that are just inevitable. One of them is that when a film pulls in four times more at the box office than it cost to make studio heads will begin to salivate and make plans for a sequel. Thus it is no surprise that after The Grudge - made for a measley $10 million - generated $40 mil in it's opening weekend people at Sony were merrily talking up a sequel.
Moviehole is reporting that Sony would like to have the sequel ready to roll by the new year, which shouldn't be difficult to pull off if they simply do a close adaptation of the second Japanese film. They're also saying that they'd like this to launch a franchise, which could be considerably more difficult considering that director Takashi Shimizu is on record saying that the third Ju-On film will be the final one.