Welcome to the world of Jason Blum, a visionary producer who has left an indelible mark on the landscape of modern cinema. Jason Blum is renowned for his pioneering work in the realm of horror and suspense, having founded Blumhouse Productions, a powerhouse studio responsible for delivering some of the most gripping and chilling films of recent years. With a keen eye for compelling storytelling and a knack for tapping into the deepest recesses of audience fears, Blum has solidified his status as a trailblazer in the industry.
Through his unique approach to filmmaking, Jason Blum has redefined the horror genre, breathing new life into it with innovative narratives and fresh perspectives. From the nail-biting tension of Paranormal Activity to the psychological thrills of Get Out, Blum’s productions have captivated audiences worldwide, earning critical acclaim and box office success. With an unparalleled ability to elicit fear and suspense, Jason Blum continues to push the boundaries of what is possible within the realm of cinematic storytelling. Below, you’ll find a collection of insightful quotes from Jason Blum himself, offering glimpses into his creative process, his passion for storytelling, and his unwavering commitment to delivering unforgettable cinematic experiences.
Rotten Tomatoes is the best thing that happened to the movie business because it means you have to make good movies. Jason Blum
I’m a big believer in creating parameters for creativity. I think parameters make people more creative. So that starts with my budgets. I only do low budget movies, and I think that makes the movies better. Jason Blum
We don’t decide how a movie will be distributed until it’s finished. It might be on iTunes, it might be on 3,000 theaters, but we make that decision after the fact. Jason Blum
I found that a lot of people ridiculed contemporary art. I decided I wanted to be involved in art everybody could understand. Jason Blum
I was lucky enough to have made a tonne of mistakes and be kind of frustrated. I was working in the movies for 15 years before I did ‘Paranormal Activity,’ so I was lucky enough to have that experience. So instead of trying to make, like, ‘Godzilla’ after ‘Paranormal Activity,’ I said, ‘Let’s keep making inexpensive movies.’ Jason Blum
The one thing I am very strict about is that I don’t like spending a lot of money on movies because the more money you spend, I think the worse that they get. Jason Blum
I think, generally, the creative process is hurt if you’re thinking about the end as opposed to focusing on day-to-day decisions. Jason Blum
I wasn’t a fanboy of horror. I didn’t grow up on horror movies. I grew up loving all movies. I still love all movies, but I particularly love scary movies – as much for the culture around them as the movies themselves. Jason Blum
Not all of our movies work, but we take shots, and we’re able to do that because we really stick to low budgets. Jason Blum
I think being snobby about the kind of storytelling people do, it just irks me. It irks me. And in fact, it’s one of the things that drives me to make as many horror movies as I do. Jason Blum
I love to go see big movies, I just don’t make them. It’s just a different business. Jason Blum
I love Hitchcock movies. I took a Hitchcock class in college, so I saw all his movies. I wrote papers on his movies. Jason Blum
It is hard to make a movie funny and scary at the same time. Jason Blum
All of our movies are lower budget, and that makes them more interesting, too: we have to come up with solutions other than throwing money at problems. Jason Blum
You’ve got to think of fun stories, and if the fun story happened to have a lesson, that’s a great thing. If you build a movie around a lesson, you’re in real trouble. Jason Blum
YouTube is found footage. It’s here to stay, and people will always come up with new concepts that will make sense for found footage. Jason Blum
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. Jason Blum
What I love about low-budget movies is my interests and the director’s interests and the actors’ interests are aligned. No one makes money unless the movie works, and that informs every creative decision. Jason Blum
My favorite thing about horror is that it attracts this great group of nuts, of which I include myself in. I was always kind of an oddball. I collected my fingernails, for instance. Jason Blum
I love musicals. I love horror movies and I love art movies. Jason Blum
When people come to me with an idea and they say, ‘We can do it found footage or traditional,’ I always say to do it traditionally. Jason Blum
The minute I was told what to do at any age, I did the opposite. Hopefully I’ll do that for the rest of my life. Jason Blum
One of the things is that you need to space out scary movies. Jason Blum
Blumhouse Books is not an outlet for us to mine intellectual property for movies and TV. Jason Blum
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. Jason Blum
I never wanted to get paid by the hour. If I was going to do more work than another guy, I wanted to get paid more. Jason Blum
When I was a kid, I really loved game shows. For whatever reason, I was fascinated with them and watched them a ton. Jason Blum
There are movies that we have done that haven’t come out very well. That doesn’t feel very good. But ‘Jem’ is in a different category. I’m proud of the movie. I stand by the movie, but I’m obviously sorry it didn’t do any better. Jason Blum
Most people who’ve had a big hit movie like ‘Paranormal Activity,’ the next thing they say is, ‘I want to make a $100 million movie.’ I have no interest in making more expensive movies. Jason Blum
The first thing I learned as a producer is that you have very little control over the life of a project. Anything can stall a film from financing to scheduling to casting. Things fall apart all the time. Don’t waste time on something that just won’t get made. Try to have as many projects going at one time as you can handle. Jason Blum
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. Jason Blum
People don’t call them horror movies, but Hitchcock, for me, is my favorite storyteller. He was really exploring dark themes, and I don’t know what category you put his movies in. Thriller? Horror? Some of them go in either one. Jason Blum
Patrick Wilson and Rose Byrne made very good money from both ‘Insidious’ movies. Word travels fast, so as soon as you have a success and do what you say you’re going to do in a contract and pay out that money, we had a lot more established actors come to us and say they want to work with us. Jason Blum
I love horror movies, obviously; otherwise, I wouldn’t make them. Jason Blum
It’s easy to get a theatrical release that shows in one theater for a week. But there’s no advertising, and no one sees the movie. It’s hard to get a real theatrical release. The distribution of independent films is, to me, extraordinarily frustrating. Jason Blum
There are so many factors that go into having a successful movie.. too many that you can’t control. Jason Blum
I love going to see musicals. That was one of the major reasons why losing the chance to produce ‘La La Land’ was so painful. Jason Blum
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. Jason Blum
You know how on movie sets there are specific chairs for each person? I hate that. We don’t have names on our chairs. We have five chairs. Anyone can sit on them. I think the idea of names on chairs on a set is terrible. It’s so dumb. So we got rid of that. Jason Blum
Hollywood looks backwards and tries to repeat. And we really try not to do that. We don’t always succeed, but I really think that what we try and do is different. Jason Blum
We make movies for the cineplex. They’re designed for wide release. They’re designed to be seen by a lot of people and eventually make money. Jason Blum
The most effective tool I have to work with artists I admire is to point to other artists that I admire and show that I’ve worked with them many, many times. It’s not because I have option deals; it’s because they want to keep working with us. Jason Blum
What I loved about ‘War Dogs’ was the fact that the tone – turning that story into a spectacular two hour ride is just such a complicated thing to do. Jason Blum
I think scary movies work best when they’re relatable, and I think one of the scariest things to young people now is bullying. Either doing it, being on the other end of it, being caught doing it. Jason Blum
I’ve grown to love it, but I’m not like a lot of other people who were always crazy horror fans like Eli Roth or Quentin Tarantino. Jason Blum
When I was working for Miramax, before Sundance, a videotape of ‘The Blair Witch Project’ – of the full, completed movie – went to a lot of the buyers. And so we all saw it before the festival, and I passed, a bunch of people passed… Then I watched the movie marching toward success, and was reminded by my bosses what a dope I was. Jason Blum
I read an interview where someone said, ‘It’s a shame that anyone can make a movie now,’ and I feel the exact opposite. Jason Blum
We make a lot of movies that I don’t think merit a wide release. We have this label called Tilt, and we have the movies come out on that, and that’s fine. But it shocks me when, having done this a few times, when I really believe a movie should get a wide release, and I struggle to get it released. That does surprise me. Jason Blum
I liked stuff like ‘Halloween,’ but I wasn’t a horror fanatic until I was in my 30s and then made ‘Paranormal Activity.’ Now, having a company, I can’t imagine doing anything else. But it took me a while to find my love for it. Jason Blum
I don’t believe in ghosts or paranormal activity, but one time I think I saw – I might have seen – no, I think I did see a ghost. Jason Blum
An effective found footage movie is much harder to make than an effective traditionally shot movie. A crappy one is much easier to make because you take your camera, and you shoot the scene, and you’re done. But to make it effective, they’re actually much trickier. Jason Blum
Our company, it’s, uh, really un-sexy. And I think most people get into Hollywood to be showy. We first of all make horror movies, which people turn their noses up at. Second of all, we make cheap movies, and Hollywood’s a lot about ego and money and, ‘My movie cost $200m!,’ you know? Jason Blum
I tell directors, ‘I can’t promise you a hit, but I can promise you the movie is going to be yours.’ When you work for a studio, they pay you a lot of money, but in exchange for that, they tell you what to do. Jason Blum
Working with kids is always hard because you have to have very limited hours. They have to have breaks, and they have to have a tutor, and they have to have a lot of – good things! But it makes it hard to shoot. Jason Blum
Personally, I love books, and I am interested in the notion that stories are told better in different media depending on the story. Jason Blum
When you work in low budgets, you can do weird stuff. Jason Blum
People complain about Hollywood movies being similar. That goes right down to the fundamental green light process, because the process involves having to compare it to three other movies. Jason Blum
Not all our movies have a social message, but I love the ones that do, and I’d love to do more of them. Jason Blum
The key to a good horror movie is what happens between the scares. The scares aren’t the tricky part. If you’re involved in what’s going on in between, the scare is going to trick you. If you’re not, the best scare in the world will not be scary. Jason Blum
I think when people are scared, they like to see movies where the scares are not real. Jason Blum
The thing I’m most proud of about – not all of our movies, but a lot of our movies – is that you might love ’em, you might hate ’em, but most of the time, they’re trying to be different or trying new things, which I think is really important. Jason Blum
I fundamentally believe that your words have so much credibility if you’re not taking money upfront. I feel really comfortable pushing actors and pushing executives and pushing marketing people when we’re not going to benefit financially unless the movie works. I feel like that makes the playing field so much more level. Jason Blum
I didn’t grow up loving horror. Jason Blum
You shoot yourself in the foot when you think, ‘We have to get a good scary movie director to do a script by another scary movie writer.’ Jason Blum
Ryan Murphy and I share our love of horror and musicals. I think those things somehow go together. Jason Blum
I have a real kind of fundamental philosophical belief that movies are better if everyone gets paid when they work, and if they don’t work, the people who worked on them make a little bit of money, and the people who finance them, they lose, but they don’t lose too much. I believe that that creates better work. Jason Blum
I’m always trying to make movies that are better than the ones that we’ve made before. We don’t always succeed at doing that by any means, but we’re always trying to raise the stakes, raise the bar, make the movies better, and that’s hard. Jason Blum
We’re offered bigger, larger budget movies to produce a lot, and we don’t do them. That’s not to say there aren’t exceptions: there are a few exceptions, but I try and stick by the rules that produce what I think is the highest quality, most innovative work and try and let the rules go that make us feel like we’re retreading. Jason Blum
I think if you went to a studio and pitched the first ‘Insidious,’ it never would have gotten made because it was so offbeat. Jason Blum
Growing up in the ’70s and ’80s when my dad had an art gallery, one of the things that frustrated me was the world seemed so tiny, and to appreciate contemporary art, you needed a history of art, a formal education. I was more interested in the people, and that’s why I went into the movie business in the first place. Jason Blum
I really love ‘Poltergeist.’ I think that’s a great, terrific movie. I did really love the first ‘Friday the 13th.’ I thought that was such a crazy movie. Jason Blum
‘The Purge’ is really about America’s crazy relationship to guns and guns gone wild, essentially, and it kind of laid the groundwork for ‘Get Out.’ Jason Blum
I think because Skype is becoming so much more prevalent, and you’re looking at someone else on a screen, it’s going to work its way into movies and TV shows in all different ways, which I think is really cool. Jason Blum
John Carpenter had a lot to do with putting social messages into genre movies. Jason Blum
I think the location is almost as important as casting the leads of the movie. The location on ‘The Purge’ was crucial to that movie working. Jason Blum
‘Paranormal Activity’ had fifty versions because it was $250 to reshoot. We’d screen it, see one thing wrong, shoot for an hour, fix it, and then screen it again. You don’t have to be disciplined about it. On a regular movie, you have to screen it and think of every problem, reshoot for three days and solve every problem, and then you’re done. Jason Blum
My easiest judgment for a script is ‘do I want to keep reading it?’ Jason Blum
One of the benefits of doing low-budget movies is you don’t have to release them wide to recoup. You can release it in a smaller way, make your money back, and keep going. Jason Blum
Halloween was definitely the biggest holiday when I was a kid. We started making our Halloween costumes in August. Me and my mom. My mom was a single mom; it was just her and I. Jason Blum
There are a lot of parallels between doing a sequel and doing low budget movies, which is they give creative parameters. As a creative person myself, I work better with parameters as opposed to anything goes. Jason Blum
The real scares on CNN, etc. and the scares in a movie, like ‘The Purge,’ are totally different. One of the ways you can tell when someone, whether it’s a film maker or executive or producer, wants to make a scary movie but doesn’t understand that distinction is they’ll want to recreate too much of what’s on TV. Jason Blum
If you are still thinking about a script after five or ten years, that’s a sign that it’s good – not that it’s stale. And the opposite is true – if everyone wants to make your movie, that’s a sign that it probably sucks. Jason Blum
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. Jason Blum
Sundance is such an acquisition-frenzied, industry-centric experience, and at SXSW, many of the movies have distribution. And the focus is more on positioning the movie as opposed to selling them. People are more relaxed. Jason Blum
I think there’s room for people to love ‘Transformers’ and love ‘Insidious.’ They coexist in a happy way; in other words, my movies wouldn’t exist if ‘Transformers’ didn’t exist, because they’re an alternative to that. They’re not better or worse, they’re just different. Jason Blum
I think movies are overdeveloped in Hollywood. There’s a big benefit to not overdeveloping and not being so precious about what you’re doing. I think you lose a kind of vitality if you develop something into the ground. Jason Blum
I’m not interested in making horror-comedies, but I’m very interested in making scary movies with funny parts. Jason Blum
The business of horror movies goes up and down, and people are always like, ‘It’s working,’ ‘It’s not working,’ but generally, I think if you make a good movie that’s scary, people will come. Jason Blum
One of my favorite things about making horror movies is, the first time you screen them in front of an audience, it’s very fun to hear people audibly react to the work you put into a movie. You don’t wonder at the end of the movie whether it worked or not. Jason Blum
It’s harder and harder to scare people, and filmmakers are aware of that, and they’re making the movies better, and I think they feel more original, which I always like. Jason Blum
‘Paranormal Activity’ was the first of our independently made/studio-released films. It was also the ultimate low-budget high-concept movie, which is what we are always looking for. ‘Paranormal Activity’ was the genesis of our model, of which I am so proud. Jason Blum
I think it’s frightening for all of us to contemplate that there’s more to the universe than just us, in whatever form it takes, that there are higher forces at work, and to me, that’s always a scary notion. Jason Blum
I started out producing theatre in New York. Jason Blum
I wouldn’t be creatively satisfied if all we did were sequels, but in the same breath, I’ll say that I wouldn’t be creatively satisfied if everything was an original. It’s good to use the different parts of my brain. Very different rules apply. Jason Blum
I do want to grow our company, so the way I’ve been doing that is moving ‘scary’ to different things. Jason Blum
It’s hard to make a movie that’s very expensive and not be thinking of the results all the time. Jason Blum
When DVD disappeared but before digital distribution came on strong, there were a few years where a movie that didn’t get theatrical would just be gone. Jason Blum
The one thing I try and do, when people say, ‘What kind of movies do you guys look for,’ the one thing I look for is ‘different.’ And I think that’s very antithetical to Hollywood. Jason Blum
With most other genres, you need movie stars. With horror, you just need a story. Jason Blum
I wish that more people were willing to turn down upfront money in exchange for doing things that are more original. Turning down a seven-figure check has a ripple effect on the budget, which has a ripple effect on the storytelling. The higher the budget gets, the fewer storytelling risks you’re able to take. Jason Blum
