Australia has produced some of the best genre film-makers in the world, says Jason Blum. And he would know, given the company he founded back in 2000 has been responsible for some of the biggest genre successes of the past 15 years.
Blumhouse Productions had one of the most significant commercial and critical hits of the year so far with Jordan Peele’s directorial debut Get Out – a film Blum nurtured through development, and produced. In the horror sphere, it’s estimated his projects have earned over $5bn at the international box office with franchises such as Paranormal Activity, Insidious and The Purge – a figure that doesn’t factor in lucrative home entertainment profits, a slow but consistent earner for genre films. And that’s to say nothing of the rest of his portfolio, which has included documentary series The Jinx and awards season favourites The Reader, Lawless and Whiplash, which won an Oscar nomination for best picture.
Yet when it comes to the future of genre film-making – and the past, for that matter – the 48-year old cannot stop talking about Australians. “You’ve exported some of the great [genre] film-makers of our time, it’s true!” he says, with an almost excited squeal. “Even just the other day, I saw [2017 psychological thriller] Berlin Syndrome by Cate Shortland … it was extraordinary.”
When we speak in April, Blum is still riding Get Out’s unexpected wave of success, touring the UK and then Europe with Peele. His business model when starting Blumhouse was to invest in film-makers: find directors with great stories, skill sets and ideas. Blum couldn’t offer them a huge budget (most Blumhouse pictures sit within the $1–$10m range), but he could offer them freedom.
“Our film-makers have a lot more control than they usually would have in Hollywood,” he says. “There aren’t a lot of arguments. We give our input, and more often than not the directors are open to listening because ultimately they know they’re gonna win the argument. What else can I say? We’re very efficient.”
It’s a premise that has been especially appealing to the next crop of Australian talent trying to make it in the US – and many have worked with, or are working with, Blumhouse. “Greg McLean, the Edgerton Brothers, Leigh Whannell and James Wan,” says Blum, the names rushing out of his mouth in a blur. “And half of our company [on staff] is Australian. We love Aussies.”
And they love Blum, finding in Blumhouse what he says they can’t get back home: an audience.
“The funny thing is, [Australia] makes great genre movie-makers but the Australian audience is very fickle towards genre movies. I still can’t explain that,” Blum says.
One example is Jennifer Kent’s The Babadook, which was shunned by Australian audiences before making it big overseas. Another is Whannell and Wan’s Saw films: after developing a proof of concept for the project, the pair had to head to the US for the film to get picked up by a studio. It ended up becoming one of the highest-grossing horror franchises of all time.
After Saw’s colossal success, the duo found a home at Blumhouse working both together and separately on a range of projects – including the thriller Stem, which Whannell is directing, and for which Blum recently visited Melbourne. Meanwhile, Wan has taken a break from horror by getting a Fast and Furious film under his belt and now DC’s $160m superhero blockbuster Aquaman, currently shooting on the Gold Coast (“He’s going to make that great,” Blum says).
With a staff of “about 60 people” (more than 25 of which are Australian, he says) the Antipodean talent pool is one that Blum says he will continue tapping for a while.
“We’ve done five movies with Leigh Whannell now, four with James Wan, two with Greg [McLean] and The Gift with Joel and Nash,” he says. “I mean, right now I don’t think there’s a more important commercial film-maker than James Wan. I really believe that. There’s just something in the water there: you guys make great genre film-makers.”
• Get Out is available on home entertainment in Australia from 9 August
