Blumhouse CEO Jason Blum Talks The Future Of Horror and Being A Guest Shark on Shark Tank
Jason Blum started Blumhouse back in 2000, focused on producing films on a small budget and giving directors creative freedom. The company has brought us hits like the Paranormal Activity and The Purge franchises, Happy Death Day, and Get Out. Pop Culture Planet’s Kristen Maldonado spoke with the Blumhouse CEO and producer at New York Comic Con about what to expect in the upcoming Blumhouse horror slate and his appearance on Shark Tank.
Blumhouse has become synonymous with horror and that isn’t lost on Blum. “It's an incredible platform. We have to use our power to bring new voices out into the world, bring new stories out into the world. I love horror, so it's very great. It's very satisfying to me,” he told me. “I feel very lucky. I'm very grateful.”
As an expert in horror, Blum is “very rarely” scared by movies anymore, but there were a few that surprised him. “There were a few things in that movie Talk To Me. There were a few things in Smile. Movies that we do, I know, obviously, but, movies that we haven't done, there were a few things every now and then […] that get [me] a little bit,” he shared. “It's hard to scare me, for sure.”
Blum expressed his excitement for the upcoming slate of horror movies they’re producing at Blumhouse. “We have Five Night at Freddy's. That's our last movie of the year, which I'm very excited about. Then the top of the year, we have a movie called Night Swim, which I did with James Wan, who was also my partner on M3GAN. Night Swim is going to make us feel about swimming pools the way we felt about the ocean after Jaws I hope. I have a great movie called Imaginary, which we made with Jeff Wadlow, who's the guy who did Truth or Dare with us a long time ago. That's a very scary movie about an imaginary friend who's not so nice,” he revealed. “[We got] another great movie coming up called Speak No Evil later next year, which is a super creepy movie with James McAvoy. We have a great slate next year.”
The horror icon is also joining Shark Tank as a guest star this season, specifically for their spin-chilling Shark-O-Week special airing this Friday. “It was so fun. I love Shark Tank too. I was really wanted to be on and I've been begging to be on the show for years. They finally said yes and it was really fun. The Sharks are really nice. I did actually two shows with them. I can't wait for everybody to see it,” he revealed, explaining what he learned: “They're working on such a compressed time. They're hearing a five minute pitch and then they have to decide, so seeing how they make the decisions, how they look at the valuations, the questions that they asked… I learned a lot of the show.”
Blum is confident that horror will only grow over time. “Horror gets more realistic as time goes by. People work harder and harder to make it seem like it could really happen to anybody and that makes it scarier. More directors than ever before are open to horror because it's one of the few genres that people are still going to the theater to watch. It's sort of gotten out of the ghetto. It's become more mainstream,” he shared. “People are using it to experiment, to tell different stories. All that stuff is good. It keeps it fresh and new and there's a gazillion new horror ideas out there that haven't been told yet.”
Catch both Five Nights at Freddy’s and Blum’s episode of Shark Tank, out this Friday.
