Blumhouse Television, Jason Blum’s acclaimed production company, is planning to produce eight feature-length thrillers for Amazon’s streaming service. Variety reports that the projects will all be “‘elevated’ thrillers or stories with dark themes,” and they’ll be directed by filmmakers with “diverse backgrounds.” (Maybe this is an opportunity for Blum to rectify his company’s poor track record of working with women.) Blumhouse has previously worked with filmmakers such as Joel Edgerton, Jon M. Chu, and Jordan Peele.
Blum founded the company in 2000 and has since made a name for himself with low-budget, low-risk, high-concept films like the Paranormal Activity, Purge, and Insidious franchises, as well as the Oscar-nominated hits Get Out and Whiplash. Earlier this year, Hulu kicked off Blumhouse’s 12-film horror series Into the Dark in which, once a month in 2018, the company releases a feature-length movie tied to the season. Most recently, Blumhouse revived the long-running Halloween horror franchise, bringing David Gordon Green’s 2018 film to theaters.
Amazon Studios chief Jennifer Salke says that Blum has “built an empire based on fear, shock and all things spine-tingling,” and the company has “redefined the horror genre for fans who are hungry for high concept scares” and “infused the genre with cultural relevancy.” That may be reaching — horror has always been an unusually culturally relevant genre — but by partnering with streaming services for these kinds of extensive film packages, Blumhouse is ensuring its own form of cultural relevancy.