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Jason Blum Talks to iHorror About His New “House” on Amazon
“Are people upset? I had people tell me people are upset,” said Jason Blum after I congratulated him via Zoom on the day of the trailer release for the movie The Craft: Legacy which he produced.
Blum, 51, has become one of the most prolific producers in history. His specialty is horror and suspense and as I watched him fidget on his phone before my mic was live I wondered who he was texting and which project he was checking in on. But that’s the nature of the beast. His entries in IMDb take about ten scrolls to get through. One of his latest is Welcome to the Blumhouse, a collection of films for Amazon Prime members.
In the business since about 1995, Blum is behind some of the most recognizable horror films in history: Paranormal Activity, Sinister, The Purge and Get Out just to name a few.
Today we are talking about Welcome to the Blumhouse among other things. Blum is really approachable and I’m struck by how handsome he is even on a computer camera. It doesn’t seem like the weight of the industry lays on his shoulders. He’s willing to discuss pretty much anything so I try to get him to talk not only about the Amazon series, but other things like pushing Halloween Kills to 2021.
How did Welcome to the Blumhouse come about?
“You know, Jennifer Salke who runs Amazon Studios and I are pals and we were speaking at a conference together and she actually approached me with the idea, and I thought we have this series which we’re finishing up for Hulu called Into the Dark. I learned things from it. There were certain things I liked about those movies and certain things I liked less; there were too many. I do like the idea of an anthology. I really thought we needed something to hold it together and we came up with this idea of making it 100-percent underrepresented filmmakers which I thought was much cooler than, like, ‘let’s make ‘em all about like spooky kids, or you know, some kind of supernatural.’ Instead of doing that make them whatever they want to be; as long as they’re scary or genre movies, but make the authors of the movies all from groups who are not represented enough as directors. I think that’s a great way to pool these together and they’re not necessarily about race or gender or ethnicity, but they’re stories specific to the people telling them. I thought that was interesting and a fun thing to do.”
Were there more than just these four this season? Or were these the ones that stood out for you?
“These were definitely my four favorite ones. But the thing is we got tons and tons. There were so many cool ideas. Hopefully, we can do this every October with Amazon for a long time because there were a lot more that I would like to do that we didn’t get to do in the original eight.”
How did you get Phylicia Rashad (Black Box) involved?
“I wish I could take credit for that. I did not. And I don’t know the story of how she got involved. I wish I could take credit.”
What is your take on streaming services?
“I think streaming services are the future so we all, as producers, we gotta feel good about them because if we don’t feel good about them then we have no future. I think there are a lot of things that are great about them. The things that we make can be seen by more people than ever before. It’s easier to find things that you like. It’s easier to reach a specific audience; the marketing can be more targeted. They’ve got a ton of capital to provide us producers to make things. I think that part is great. The thing that I think is less great and challenging connected to a lot of those things is that a lot of times working with a streamer you feel like you’re making one of 5000 tuna fish sandwiches. That is not fun. And one of the really unique experiences I had with Amazon on this particular series of movies is that I felt like the relationship I have with a theatrical partner. They came up with the title. They came up with this amazing poster. Personally, I love it. They did this trailer that I really like. On streaming the way that we get paid—you get paid upfront. So, if nine billion people see it or one person sees it you make the same amount of money. So in a movie, even if you’re not happy with the marketing or whatever if it’s a big hit you’re financially rewarded. With streaming there’s no financial reward if it’s a big hit or not a big hit—or you’ve already gotten a reward is another way to say that. So, all that’s left is if you feel like what you made is being treated carefully. Like someone cares about it, that they’re interested in it—they want to give it the best shot it has. If you don’t have that it’s a little disheartening. With Amazon, it felt like I had the energy of the company behind getting people to see this thing that we’ve done.”
I think there might be Blumhouse channel in the future?
“That’s one of my mid to long-term goals to have a ‘button.’ I’m not going to do a stand-alone subscription service I’m not going to compete with my friends at Apple and Amazon and Netflix. But I’d like a button on one of those platforms where there was a Blumhouse button, and you could find all our movies–all our shows–there and our new stuff there, and it would be like a channel on one of the platforms. I think that would be really cool.”
You keep recharging the genre. You topped Blair Witch with Paranormal Activity as far as meta-marketing. You keep doing it and you keep doing it. Why did you choose horror out of every other genre?
“Clearly from what we just talked about, I’m not interested in doing shows and movies that like seven people see. I think horror is a really cool way to tell stories about universal themes to get people talking about things. But also it gives the marketers at movie companies or television companies or streaming companies something to hang their hat on so there’s a way to get people to see what we’re doing. That’s one reason, and I think the other reason is I’ve always been kind of an oddball. I’m less into like—I mean I don’t mind it, but it’s not like I like the violence of horror movies; I love the weirdness of horror movies, and I love like gross stuff in that way. And I love that the horror community is kinda ostracized a little bit, I kinda like that too. Although Jordan Peele kinda fucked that up a little bit (laughs)—you can win an Oscar for doing a horror movie. Just kidding. But uh, that’s why. I’ll always love doing horror.”
One last question: How difficult was it for you to move Halloween Kills to 2021?
“You know for me it wasn’t that difficult. In August I called Universal and I said let’s not play with fire here. I think there are very few movies that are unequivocally theatrical experience movies. There are very few left and that one of them and I said, ‘let’s not play with fire here, let’s move this.’ We had Halloween Ends dated in ’21 so we just put it on where Halloween Ends—we just shifted the whole thing back. So I didn’t belabor it. There was no part of me that wanted to stick this October. And luckily, they agreed. It wasn’t too difficult.”
Welcome to the Blumhouse is on Amazon Prime. Season one includes:
Black Box (Oct. 6): After losing his wife and his memory in a car accident, a single father undergoes an agonizing experimental treatment that causes him to question who he really is.
The Lie (Oct. 6): When their teenaged daughter confesses to impulsively killing her best friend, two desperate parents attempt to cover up the horrific crime, leading them into a complicated web of lies and deception.
Evil Eye (Oct. 13): A seemingly perfect romance turns into a nightmare when a mother becomes convinced her daughter’s new boyfriend has a dark connection to her own past.
Nocturne (Oct. 13): Inside the halls of an elite arts academy, a timid music student begins to outshine her more accomplished and outgoing twin sister when she discovers a mysterious notebook belonging to a recently deceased classmate.
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Movies
‘Evil Dead’ Film Franchise Getting TWO New Installments
It was a risk for Fede Alvarez to reboot Sam Raimi’s horror classic The Evil Dead in 2013, but that risk paid off and so did its spiritual sequel Evil Dead Rise in 2023. Now Deadline is reporting that the series is getting, not one, but two fresh entries.
We already knew about the Sébastien Vaniček upcoming film that delves into the Deadite universe and should be a proper sequel to the latest film, but we are broadsided that Francis Galluppi and Ghost House Pictures are doing a one-off project set in Raimi’s universe based off of an idea that Galluppi pitched to Raimi himself. That concept is being kept under wraps.
“Francis Galluppi is a storyteller who knows when to keep us waiting in simmering tension and when to hit us with explosive violence,” Raimi told Deadline. “He is a director that shows uncommon control in his feature debut.”
That feature is titled The Last Stop In Yuma County which will release theatrically in the United States on May 4. It follows a traveling salesman, “stranded at a rural Arizona rest stop,” and “is thrust into a dire hostage situation by the arrival of two bank robbers with no qualms about using cruelty-or cold, hard steel-to protect their bloodstained fortune.”
Galluppi is an award-winning sci-fi/horror shorts director whose acclaimed works include High Desert Hell and The Gemini Project. You can view the full edit of High Desert Hell and the teaser for Gemini below:
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Movies
‘Invisible Man 2’ Is “Closer Than Its Ever Been” to Happening
Elisabeth Moss in a very well-thought-out statement said in an interview for Happy Sad Confused that even though there have been some logistical issues for doing Invisible Man 2 there is hope on the horizon.
Podcast host Josh Horowitz asked about the follow-up and if Moss and director Leigh Whannell were any closer to cracking a solution to getting it made. “We are closer than we have ever been to cracking it,” said Moss with a huge grin. You can see her reaction at the 35:52 mark in the below video.
Whannell is currently in New Zealand filming another monster movie for Universal, Wolf Man, which might be the spark that ignites Universal’s troubled Dark Universe concept which hasn’t gained any momentum since Tom Cruise’s failed attempt at resurrecting The Mummy.
Also, in the podcast video, Moss says she is not in the Wolf Man film so any speculation that it’s a crossover project is left in the air.
Meanwhile, Universal Studios is in the middle of constructing a year-round haunt house in Las Vegas which will showcase some of their classic cinematic monsters. Depending on attendance, this could be the boost the studio needs to get audiences interested in their creature IPs once more and to get more films made based on them.
The Las Vegas project is set to open in 2025, coinciding with their new proper theme park in Orlando called Epic Universe.
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Jake Gyllenhaal’s Thriller ‘Presumed Innocent’ Series Gets Early Release Date
Jake Gyllenhaal’s limited series Presumed Innocent is dropping on AppleTV+ on June 12 instead of June 14 as originally planned. The star, whose Road House reboot has brought mixed reviews on Amazon Prime, is embracing the small screen for the first time since his appearance on Homicide: Life on the Street in 1994.
Presumed Innocent is being produced by David E. Kelley, J.J. Abrams’ Bad Robot, and Warner Bros. It is an adaptation of Scott Turow’s 1990 film in which Harrison Ford plays a lawyer doing double duty as an investigator looking for the murderer of his colleague.
These types of sexy thrillers were popular in the ’90s and usually contained twist endings. Here’s the trailer for the original:
According to Deadline, Presumed Innocent doesn’t stray far from the source material: “…the Presumed Innocent series will explore obsession, sex, politics and the power and limits of love as the accused fights to hold his family and marriage together.”
Up next for Gyllenhaal is the Guy Ritchie action movie titled In the Grey scheduled for release in January 2025.
Presumed Innocent is an eight-episode limited series set to stream on AppleTV+ starting June 12.
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