Jason Blum
Jason Blum
Jason Ferus Blum is an American film producer. Blum is the founder and CEO of Blumhouse Productions. He won the 2014 Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Television Movie for producing The Normal Heart, and was nominated for the 2014 Academy Award for Best Picture for producing Whiplash...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionProducer
CountryUnited States of America
finally good horror reasons resistant scary
Ethan Hawke is not a horror movie fan, but he's a really good friend of mine, and I finally cajoled him into doing 'Sinister.' Later, he said one of the reasons he was really resistant to doing a horror movie is he thought it'd be really scary on set.
good great horror interested movies people series
When there's a great horror movie, people are like, 'Horror's back!' And when there's a series of not so good ones, 'Horror's dead.' I think it's all about the quality. When there are one or two good horror movies in a row, people come out interested again.
budget business hire larger mainly movies producer
Occasionally I'll be a producer for hire on a larger budget movie, but with Blumhouse Pictures, we mainly focus on micro-budget, under-$5-million-dollar movies. That's what we're in business to do, and that's what we're in business to make.
hard succeeds theatrical wide
It's really hard to make an original movie of any kind that succeeds in the theatrical market place, in the wide release market place.
audience filmmakers helps minutes people scare spend stuff
I try not to put pressure on filmmakers to come up with a big scare at the beginning. I think that helps let the audience settle in and get to know the people they're about to spend 90 minutes with. Once the scarier stuff happens, it's scarier because of that.
fun kids thinking
I think horror movies are still - this can be said of all movies - but being with a group of people scared together is more and more something unusual and fun. Especially for kids who are going out less generally.
weekend thinking people
I think there's a limit. People want to be scared, but not every weekend, maybe every third weekend.
kids thinking way
The only way I think about kids in production is practically, the younger the kids are the harder it is to shot the movie.
mistake successful thinking
I think the mistake people make with horror movies and what makes them successful is a lot of horror movies get made by people who don't really like them, so they don't respect them. And when you like horror and have admiration for it, that community knows that what's important for a horror movie is important for every other kind of movie.
fun thinking play
Currently there's no other way to get a movie into 3,000 theaters except with a studio. We have a first-look deal with Universal, and it's been fun to work with them. But studios are a part of our life. I think they'll always be, but they'll play a different role. The consumer and the creator are getting closer together.
mind months window
There's S-VOD, which is 3 1/2 months after the theatrical release. The windows are going to get closer and closer, and the sooner they collapse in my mind the better it'll be for everybody. It's coming, but change is hard. It will be more profitable for everybody, including exhibitors.
love-is people underdog
I love being the underdog. It's one of the reason I like making horror movies, because a lot of people don't like them or are prejudiced against them. So it's one of the many reasons I like horror and it's also the reason I like low budget, because it automatically makes us the underdog.
ideas underdog almost-done
But, it's much easier to do that than produce the movies from scratch. It excites the same thing in me, whether we build it from the ground up, or whether we come on when the movie is done or almost done. The idea of supporting the underdog and getting a smaller movie out there in a big way is equally exciting.
art independent choices
Directors typically have three choices - you do a studio movie and get a paycheck up front, you do an independent movie, which is for your heart and you don't get paid up front and probably don't make any money on it, but it hopefully goes to Sundance and is more of an art movie, and then you do TV.