{"id":321172,"date":"2026-02-28T03:45:09","date_gmt":"2026-02-28T03:45:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/321172\/"},"modified":"2026-02-28T03:45:09","modified_gmt":"2026-02-28T03:45:09","slug":"jason-blum-still-wants-to-make-movies-for-less-than-1m","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/321172\/","title":{"rendered":"Jason Blum Still Wants to Make Movies for Less Than $1M"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tJason Blum<\/a>\u2019s name is synonymous with horror. And look up the word prolific, you\u2019ll likely find him as part of that definition. Blum has over 200 produced credits to his name, mostly in movies but in television too. In 2025, he saw seven movies released, all in the horror field except one, the true-life drama The Lost Bus.<\/p>\n

\n\tOver the years, he has given nightmares to audiences via massive horror franchises such as Paranormal Activity,\u00a0Insidious,\u00a0The Black Phone,\u00a0The Purge, and\u00a0Five Nights at Freddy\u2019s\u00a0but also earned accolades, including Oscar nominations, for Damien Chazelle\u2019s\u00a0Whiplash, Spike Lee\u2019s\u00a0BlacKkKlansman, and Jordan Peele\u2019s\u00a0Get Out.<\/p>\n

\n\tAnd he has done it mostly by generating his movies independently. And now, Blumhouse\u2019s merger with James Wan\u2019s bannerAtomic Monster, Blum is poised to be an even bigger movie player in Hollywood.<\/p>\n

\n\tThis Saturday, the Producers Guild of America is handing him its Milestone Award, which honors \u201cindividuals or teams who have made historic contributions to the entertainment industry.\u201d Past recipients have ranged from Walt Disney and Alfred Hitchcock to Steven Speilebrg and James Cameron, to Donna Langley and Ted Sarandos.<\/p>\n

\n\tSeemed like a good time for a chat\u2026<\/p>\n

\n\tWhat do you think has been your biggest contribution to the industry?<\/p>\n

\n\tI think my biggest contribution to the industry has been starting one of the last kind of independent studios with a brand that\u2019s really based in keeping budgets down by giving artists equity, which allows for cutting edge television shows and movies. I did not read that, by the way. That was off the top of my head.<\/p>\n

\n\tHave other people followed you or do you think you\u2019re of the only ones doing that?<\/p>\n

\n\tPeople are doing different versions of it and by the way, we weren\u2019t the first to do it, but we were the first and only ones to scale it. We\u2019ve been able to scale that approach as opposed to doing it as a one-off or two-off or as a side business.\u00a0 We\u2019ve focused for 20 years on making scary movies and expanded that activity so that where anyone looks for scary things, we are there in one way or another, whether it\u2019s movies, TV shows, live events, merch.<\/p>\n

\n\tYou got into live events pretty early on. At what point did you realize that was a thing you could monetize?<\/p>\n

\n\tIt\u2019s disingenuous to say we didn\u2019t do it for money but it was also what I\u2019ve been focused on since the very beginning, which is really connecting the name Blumhouse with things that are effectively scary. So I always thought if we did a live event that was great and it was called Blumhouse, more people would go to the movies, you know?<\/p>\n

\n\tYou recently hired an executive from Shudder, Sam Zimmerman. That\u2019s in a bid to try and keep being plugged into the horror scene?<\/p>\n

\n\tI wouldn\u2019t frame it that way at all. As the brand has evolved and post our merger with Atomic Monster, we\u2019ve been making slightly more expensive movies. Not expensive, but compared to what we used to make, more expensive. And I don\u2019t wanna lose the capacity to make low budget and super low budget movies. We\u2019re looking at some sub-million dollar movies, and I wanna have an apparatus to continue to do that.<\/p>\n

\n\tSpeaking to scaling projects, you\u2019re redoing or re-imagining The Exorcist, you\u2019re relaunching Saw, you tried to make a play for the rights to Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Are you focusing more now on name IP?<\/p>\n

\n\tPart of the company is definitely focusing on more name IP. Because in a post-COVID world, the originals that are working are fewer and far between, and the ones that are, are much bigger. In the last two and a half years, there\u2019s been one movie under $5 million that\u2019s broken out\u2026<\/p>\n

\n\tWhich one is that?<\/p>\n

\n\tThe only super low budget movie that crossed over was Longlegs. And that was two years ago now. Obviously the originals that have completely connected with the audience last year, Sinners and Weapons, are much, much bigger movies. But the other movies that are really, really working are IP. Black Phone, Five Nights of Freddy\u2019s, Final Destination. And I think because people now, when they go to the movies, they decide before they go. They don\u2019t just show up and say, \u201cI wanna see a horror movie.\u201d They, more often than not, choose something that means something to them more than just a title.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tElizabeth Lail, Piper Rubio and Josh Hutcherson in Five Nights at Freddy\u2019s 2.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tEverett Collection<\/p>\n

\n\tSo how do you avoid, and I\u2019m going to use Disney here as a comparison, a situation where all you\u2019re doing is live-action remakes? Yes, it can be incredibly successful, but the tap is going to run out sooner than later. You shouldn\u2019t be just relying on some guy in a mask from 50 years ago, right?<\/p>\n

\n\tFirst of all, I love being compared to Disney because we wanna be the Disney of Fear, so that makes me very happy. The very simple answer to your question is, you must keep doing originals. So this year of our five wide releases, we have two originals. We have Obsession and we have Other Mommy. So, so 40 percent of our slate this year is originals. And we\u2019re gonna always continue to do originals. But it used to be fifty-fifty, and now it\u2019s a little less than that.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhat\u2019s behind the shift?<\/p>\n

\n\tCOVID did a number on certain kinds of theatrical. You know, people, they want bigger experiences or they want movies connected to IP, or they want something that they\u2019re familiar with from before. So there has to be a reason to go. Now, when you give them a reason to go, you can point out post-COVID that people have shown up bigger than ever before. Our biggest releases have been post-COVID. Five Nights of Freddy\u2019s is our biggest movie. That was \u201923\u2026after COVID.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tGet Out <\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tUniversal Pictures\/courtesy Everett Collection<\/p>\n

\n\tLast question. Going back to your entire career, do you have one movie that stands out above all?<\/p>\n

\n\tGet Out stands out to me because it just hit every paradigm of what we did. It was super low budget, it was very unusual, it was left of center, and I think it changed the face of horror in a more profound way than really any horror movie of the 21st century. I think what Jordan did with Get Out changed the trajectory of horror.<\/p>\n

\n\tHow so?<\/p>\n

\n\tI think for better or for worse, he made horror cool. And if you like horror, it\u2019s great. If you don\u2019t like horror, it\u2019s not good. I think a lot of filmmakers, who wouldn\u2019t have done a horror movie before Get Out, tried one after.<\/p>\n

\n\tSo the A-V Club became very popular.<\/p>\n

\n\tThat\u2019s a good way to say it. He made the AV Club cool.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tA version of this story appeared in the Feb. 23 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine.\u00a0Click here to subscribe<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jason Blum\u2019s name is synonymous with horror. And look up the word prolific, you\u2019ll likely find him as…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":321173,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[93,61,60,1929,270],"class_list":{"0":"post-321172","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-ie","10":"tag-ireland","11":"tag-jason-blum","12":"tag-movies"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/321172","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=321172"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/321172\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/321173"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=321172"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=321172"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=321172"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}