Jason Blum on Producing, Creating Modern Scares, and the Blumhouse Legacy

“Instead of trying to answer these macro questions about the stories that come into the company, we answer very micro questions: do you like this? You think it's cool? You think it's scary? Have you seen it before?”

By now, Jason Blum is a household name. He ought to be, as the three-time Academy Award nominee has over 200+ producing credits since his career began in the late 1990s. Though Blum has had his name attached to films such as WHIPLASH, GET OUT, and BLACKkKLANSMAN, he is best known for his game-changing strides in the horror film genre.

In 2000, he founded Blumhouse Productions with the intention to help produce competitive horror films on a smaller scale and a lower budget. The company has a reputation of allowing the directors of each project to have creative freedom and then releasing the films into theaters through their studio. Initially, the company purchased films that were already made and marketed them into success.

“The best producing is acquisition, you know?” Blum said. “We did PARANORMAL ACTIVITY [which was] was finished. And then I saw it finished, bought it, dressed it up a little bit. You know, that's the best thing. That's the easiest. We did that on UNFRIENDED, too. But we also did that on THE VISIT, you know, those three movies—we really acquired them as opposed to produced them.”

After the success of some of their franchises, the company began to produce original projects and establish themselves as the studio to beat. In addition to being CEO of the company, Blum remains active as either a producer or executive producer. Speaking to this, he said:

“I have a lot to do with choosing casting. I don’t mean just the actors, but like, the whole thing, whether putting the director on, or another producer on, and the crew, all that. [I am] helping choose the ingredients in the soup. Hopefully if I’ve done that well, when you’re making the soup, you don’t have to get too involved. ”

In addition to being involved in the marketing and distribution choices of the films, Blum frequently collaborates with the filmmakers by pitching them ideas and then giving them the freedom to run with whichever idea best fits their creative vision. “The last thing that I think we do is we really help use the brand that is Blumhouse to amplify shows and movies that might ordinarily kind of get overlooked,” Blum continued. “And that I think, is a very, very big part about what we do now today as a company.”

The most recent drop from the studio is a series of horror films grouped together in a marketing push called “Welcome to the Blumhouse.” With films such as EVIL EYE, NOCTURNE, THE LIE, and BLACK BOX, the company is working harder than ever to keep their content fresh for its audience. The challenge with making horror films is that what was scary twenty years ago is not necessarily scary now, and what is scary now may not necessarily be scary twenty years in the future. So how does Blumhouse rise to this challenge? “One of the ways that we do it is to try and think as little as possible about that, because that's such a daunting idea,” Blum jokes.

“If you read every script and said, ‘Is this gonna stand the test of time? Is this about what’s going on today?’ You know...we kind of do it the opposite way. We’ve had a good track record by thinking about it in kind of the reverse way . . .if you’re doing a big budget, you’ve got to say, ‘Have you seen it before? Yeah, these three other movies are like this, they were successful.’ We want the opposite answer. We want, ‘I haven’t seen it before.’ I like it, or I love it, is a better answer. And there’s something fucking really disturbing about this. And those are our three questions. And if the answer to those three questions is ‘yes,’ more likely than not, we’re gonna make it. And we let the world decide how relevant [it is] or [if it will] stand the test of time.”

With a whopping 57 future projects attached to his name, does he consciously think about building the Blumhouse legacy, or does he zero-in his attention to his current projects? “I try and do both. It's really important to do both,” he says. “Because if you get too wound up in five steps ahead, it's like that other question. The minute you really start thinking about your legacy, as someone who's running your company, your company is fucked. The minute you think of yourself as a big success, you may as well throw in your chips.”

You can check out the “Welcome to the Blumhouse” films streaming on Amazon Prime, and you can listen to our full interview with Jason Blum below.