Jason Blum Discusses Future Of Blumhouse Studio Including ‘The Exorcist’ Remake
If you are a fan of horror films, then you know about Blumhouse Productions. Jason Blum started Blumhouse Productions in 2002 with a series of minor movies and shorts. The modern horror trifecta of Paranormal Activity, Insidious, and Sinister put Blumhouse on the horror map and solidified it as our generation’s Hammer Film Studio. Jason Blum recently sat down with Variety and looked back on what makes the studio so important to the horror industry and the status of some upcoming projects, including the ending of the Halloween series and a brief status of the eyebrow-raising The Exorcist remake.
Jason Blum wanted Blumhouse to be a place where horror was front and center. Its focus was on low-budget movies while giving full creative control to the filmmakers:
“We borrowed the French auteur system and applied it to very commercial filmmaking. We give them more control than they typically get in Hollywood, but they have to give us something as well: a commitment to make movies inexpensively. The way studio filmmaking works is correlated to budget, the more expensive the movie, the more time the director is strategizing on how they are going to get their way. On a $200 million movie, the director is spending 80% of their time on politics and 20% actually making the movie. On our $4 million movie, 100% of time is spent on making a good movie.”
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Some big-name directors that worked with Blumhouse include Leigh Whannell of Insidious, Christopher Landon from Happy Death Day and Paranormal Activity, and Jordan Peele from Best Picture nominee and Best Original Screenplay winner Get Out. Each of these movies worked with a small budget and paid off big at the box office. Paranormal Activity famously had a budget of $15,000 with a box office haul of $193 million. It is safe to say this style works for fans as well as critics. While Blum wants to maintain that “independent” vibe of the studio, he does have some caveats to the work they will back. For one, he would not produce an NC-17 or work with new directors:
“I am not a film school. Studios choose a first-time director over a director who had two hits and two misses. I do the opposite.”
He also attributed the success of his works to a tricky balance between message and entertainment:
“I never say we are exclusively looking for ‘stories with a message.’ As soon as you do that, no one goes to see your films anymore. If there is a burning desire, which I have a lot of, to talk about political issues, I think horror genre is a great way to do it. But you have to make the film fun and scary first.”
Part of the success of the studio means they can attract interesting partners and first looks. Blumhouse Studio’s first success was when they obtained the rights to the Halloween franchise. Originally, the studio was only allowed to do three movies in the franchise. And while the final movie is coming this October, Jason Blum and John Carpenter have both said the franchise is not over. Blum explained:
“I didn't say it's gonna be the last Halloween movie. It's our last Halloween movie. We have no more rights to make any more Halloween, so it goes back to Malek [Akkad] and what he does, only he knows, but we are done. This is our last one, and I think people will be very happy.”
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Carpenter echoed the sentiment in his own surly way:
“Let me explain the movie business to you: if you take a dollar sign and attach it to anything, there will be somebody who wants to do a sequel. It will live. If the dollar sign is not big enough, no matter what, it will not live.”
Blumhouse Studio is done with the franchise for the moment. So what is next for Halloween director David Gordon Green? He is about to give The Exorcist the Halloween treatment but with a bit of a twist. Green explained that he will direct a new trilogy of sequel films centering around a returning character from the original while expanding the legacy with new ideas. The first film is expected to be released in 2023, featuring Ellen Burstyn, who will reprise her role as Chris MacNeil, the mother of possessed Regan (Linda Blair) from the original. Leslie Odom Jr. will play the father of a newly possessed child who seeks out Regan for her help on how to save his own daughter.
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If Jason Blum continues to hold the line with his upcoming projects and keeps the same formula for success, then we fans will continue to enjoy this golden age of horror.
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Source(s): Variety, IndieWire, Collider, Comicbook.com, ScreenRant