Jason Blum

23:40For sure. For sure. But when you get something really reinventing or innovating, it doesn't relate to something else. It's different.

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25:21Tell me about the world of acquisition. So you lived in that world and it sounds like a fascinating, what are the kind of films that you saw? What's that life like? It was amazing. How many films are there? I'm 54. I graduated college in 1991. I sold cable TV door to door and then I was a real estate agent in New York. Real estate agent especially was great trading for what we do. I got a job. My first job was coming to Error Entertainment. Error Entertainment was run by a guy who had a commercial real estate company down this hallway. And a movie company down the other hallway. And he released independent movies and my roommate in college was no a bound back who was a writer director.

26:05He had written this script called kicking and screaming. It was called fifth year and this guy Dennis Friedland. He flirted with making the movie for the summer while I was renting apartments. And at the end of the summer he said, I'm not going to make your movie but I'll give you a job. You could work full time in the movie business and stop being a real estate agent. So I took him up on it and he gave me the job of acquisitions which I had no idea what it was. But at that time there were about 1 ,000 or 1 ,500 movie. This is just domestically not internationally. 1 ,000 movies, maybe 1 ,500 movies, a year that we're getting made.

26:43Almost none of them got distribution. It's such a crazy, you know they were 100 would get distribution of some kind. And it was a very fringe business and you'd go, I'd go to all the film festivals. And it was a tiny company. So we were playing in the more. So I would look at all the movies that the big companies, New Line and Fox Searchlight and Grammar C and whatever the companies were the past on. And we would try and buy a movie for like 25 grand or 50 grand. We'd release it in 10 cities. We'd spend $100 ,000 to open the movie in New York and LA and then Calendar House played a little bit.

27:18And then you'd try and sell like 3 ,000 video tapes. And then there was a woman named Doris Kasap who just left HBO. But I would try and sell the HBO pay TV rights for like 35 grand. And you try and spend 25 to 50 to buy another 150 years. So either total outlay is like 2 ,300 grand and you try and bring in 500 grand. Most of the time you would. And you know, one every couple of hundred might break out. One every couple hundred Macroly and for us we were doing you know, 15 or 20 a year. And one or two a year we had a movie called Band of Queen with Shaker Kapoor's first movie. We had a movie called My Life and Turn Around.

27:55So one or two a year would make like 800 grand or something. It was a very tough business. But then I went to work for Miramax in 1995. There was a woman at Miramax named Amy Israel who did my job for Miramax. And Miramax at that time they were like triple A. That was the dream team. And so I went from this kind of very tiny little thing to a much bigger playing field. How did they find you? Amy was 100 % responsible for getting me the job at Miramax. We were friends and she would help me at Arrow was the name of the company I think I said. She would say you should look at these 10 movies, you should look at these 10 movies.

28:32And there was a job opening at Miramax and she said you should interview for it. And I had a 15 minute interview. I told the story at the interview of how I bought Band of Queen actually. And after I told that story I got the job. And I worked there for 4, 5, 95 to 2000. And it was massively stressful. And I worked unbelievable hours. But it was an incredible experience. And I learned so much paranormal activity never would have happened that I not had that experience. Was there ever a case where your inexperience worked your advantage? I mean, I still think that's true all the time. Don't you?

29:13I know for me it's all the time. Yeah, because you don't know what's impossible. Sure. You don't know what doesn't work. You blindly stumble in. I asked like, my wife accuses me of that all the time. But like I ask like the dumb question. I ask 20, I tell my kids every day. I say daddy makes a thousand mistakes a day. You know, that's like our mantra in our house. And I think that happens all the time. And that definitely happened when I was in. The idea that I was 20 years old I was going to produce no bound backs. Moody, my other 20 year old friends like his first movie was insane totally insane.

29:47But why not? It's like the other side of it is why not? And we got it done, you know, with somehow I mean, I didn't get the credit I should have gotten it and I lost money and I know what had happened. It happened. It happened. Yeah, yeah, yeah. How would you describe how does the mainstream model of filmmaking work versus what you do? I don't really know. I honestly don't know how the mainstream works either. So describe both. Yeah, sure. Well, we're totally opposite, you know, and the unusual thing about the company is that usually if you're totally opposite, you wouldn't be in the mainstream movie.

30:21Yes. You know, you wouldn't be working with the studios. You'd be working independent distributors, independent. So our approach to making movies is totally, totally opposite to mainstream. But our distribution is the same, which is kind of cool. Mainstream Hollywood. You'll be surprised to hear is still just absolutely addicted to money. And I mostly fault the representatives for that, for a lawyer, an agent, a manager. No matter, you would be shocked. The amount of money we've made for people working in our system on backend. And I'll talk to agents who represented seven people, or managers, or lawyers, or whatever, eight people who benefited from that.

31:04And they will say to me, well, the director already did a $10 million movie. So the next movie I want the director to do, we got it. We're looking for a $30 to $50 million movie. Now, it's hard to impress upon you, in my opinion, how backwards that thinking is. Like the idea that doesn't matter. It doesn't matter what it calls us. It doesn't matter what it calls us. You should do the script that you love. Of course. And unless you're one of 20 people, your voice will be less heard directly correlates to how much you spend. So you have a director who's done a great Sundance movie, and then they're thrown into a Marvel movie.

31:44They're not really direct. I mean, they're kind of directing the Marvel movie, but Marvel's directing that movie. And the foundation of the studio system, not the studio's fault, not the studio's fault. It's all the representatives, men and all the people's fault, telling their artists, you're ready for a more expensive movie. And that's for a very simple reason, which is that when you're working at one of those companies, unfortunately, even if they're not public, they're based on annual bonuses. So if you say to an agent over five years, you're going to make $10 million, or we'll pay you $3 .5 million this year, the agent will always choose three and a half instead of 10, because he doesn't, he or she doesn't even know if they're going to be at the agency.

32:26That client might have laughed. A million things could have happened. So everyone's playing a short -term game. So everyone is playing a short -term, pay me upfront game. Not everyone, but if you ask kind of fundamentally the difference between our business and our business is a long -term, work for a little bit of money upfront. If it works, you'll make way more than you'll make three times what you would have made upfront. And then you get all the - It'll be a more personal honest, it'll be your movie. It'll be your movie, and you'll get a more, and the experience is so much better. And it applies to us too.

33:03If I'm talking to normally my partner on all these movies is universal. If I'm talking to Universal, and they paid me a $4 million fee before the movie's released, and you of all people will appreciate this. It feels like not ethical to then tell them how I want the creatively the movie. I think it should be this actor. I think it should be this actor. They bought it. And by the way, I'm getting paid already, and they're a hundred million in the whole. So the conversation is so fraught, and it's not equal, and it's not fun, and it's like, Lula, it feels yucky to me. Whereas instead of paying a hundred, you're paying $15 million for the movie, or $10 million for the movie.

33:43I haven't gotten anything unless the movie works. That creative conversation about what we're doing together is so much more fruitful. I have so much more ground to stand on, you know, because it's like, I got skin in the game too. And that is fundamentally on the movie business side. That's the big difference between what we do and what studios do. And the sad thing about just the entertainment business in a whole is that model is being, I shouldn't even say it's being challenged, in television it's been decimated. There's no such thing as ownership left in TV. In movies there really is, but in TV the idea of owning an equity in show, it's been decimated by streaming.

34:20And I don't know if you saw, I wrote an op -ed about it in the times a year ago. But I think that's a really bad thing for our business as a whole. How did your relationship with Universal start? This is a good story too. I did paranormal activity, I did two paranormal activities. Paramount kicked me off the lot because they were going through. You could tell I have such a chip on my shoulder about Paramount. I love the thing. I just read the book by the way. I love the thing kicked you off the lot. They kicked me off the lot. I love it. They did me a huge favor. The huge favor helped build my business.

34:47It was terrific. There's a manager who's still in the business named Ellen Goldsmith Bane, who has a company called Gotham, who I haven't seen in many years, but she was kind enough to let me camp out in offices in her office there on sunset. I took a little, you know, the three people left it by company. You know what I went there. And the reason the Paramount kicked me off the lot was the reason that I couldn't really get my next thing going is because they had so little success at Paramount that everyone in the company wanted the success of their own paranormal activities so badly that they wanted to erase the producers and the filmmakers.

35:19They just wanted us to go away so that they could own every bit of it. Wow. Which is amazing. Yeah. And anyway, Donald Langley and Brian Lordreta lunch like a year after or something like that. And Donna said, you know, I really want to get, there's this horror tradition at Paramount. Like I really want to get that going again. And Brian said, have you met Jason Blum? And that was how my, and she said, no, I have no idea who that is and I went in. I picture my thing. Has Brian been your agent the whole time? He's been my agent. Brian, I met Brian in 1993. Wow. I was producing again during my real estate agent days.

35:53I also produced theater. I've had a company called the Malaparte Theater Company. And Ethan Hawk was my partner in it. So Brian represented Ethan in the early 90s. And he would come to the shows. And I was the producer of these theater shows. And I was like running around making sure Brian had a good seat. And that's how we met. And he's always been, you know, my mentor and helper. And he's been absolutely instrumental in structuring and growing Blum House. Like in an incredible way. He's been an incredible partner to us. So we do the deal with Universal. And often, sometimes he will talk about like, why don't studios just cop your model?

36:32They can't. They're just not built to make low budget. It doesn't. They just can't. And they can do every so once every four years that happens. But they can't do it five times a year like we do. Because you can't. It's two different businesses. Like you said, we're just in different businesses. Anyway, I like it. My whole thing. The first movie we made was The Purge. It was a $2 .5 million movie. And there was so funny. All the budget, the conversations. And Jimmy Horowitz, who was a senior business person at Universal, the senior business person at Universal. And he's been there forever. And he was very instrumental in like putting together a deal that I could do with Universal.

37:09So I could do my thing. And I give him a lot of credit. Him and Don, a lot of credit. They really did a thing where it's like, here's $3 million. Come back with a finished movie. Because anything other than that, which is just a word. It would undermine the whole thing. The red tape of the system. Yeah, it would not work. It would not work. And I remember we made the movie. We test -screened the movie. That wonderful distribution executive, Nikki Rocco, who was a great kind of famous. She was there. They all came to this screening. They just couldn't understand like a $2 .5 million. How are we going to release it?

37:40And it was luckily it was a big success for everybody. And that kicked off the business at Universal. Tell me about the test screenings in general. Is it good? Is it bad? What? Tell me about them. Tell me about everything about them. I love a test screening. When a director says I had a friends and family screening, I stop listening as soon as they say a friend's family. It's your friends and family. I don't have take. I like very, very early on. It's good to show friends and family. But then when you're ready, I love a test screening because you get just movie goers. And the best test screenings are out of town.

38:15We try and do a lot of ours out of town. Not most. But we try and do a lot of them in Oklahoma or Arizona. Or even in Northern California because this area is so over -tested. Anywhere within 50 miles of MLA is having a test screening almost every day. So it's just over screened in the audience is kind of cynical. You get like the film students who are in, you know, they say the end of the first act of slow. You're like, oh my god, I can't believe this is a test screen. And I think the scores and the comments are helpful. But not that I think is taken or leave it. Some of our most successful movies have had bad scores.

38:51And we've had some great scoring movies that have not done well at all. So the scores mean less to you. The scores are not that important to me. The score just the feeling in the room? The feeling in the, you can feel. Yeah. You can feel like this paranormal. We didn't test screening until that last. But you can feel when you've got a movie and you got the audience, you could totally feel it. Yeah. And you can feel when the audience is with the movie and you can feel when they're not. And you can feel when the end works and when it doesn't. Many, many of our movies don't have a release date until they're finished.

39:24And we go, we test screen our movies a lot. And each time it's out the revisions. Recruit revision after reshoots. We'll shoot additional material. Get out. We famously reshot the end of the movie. We had a different plot wise. Like what happened at the end was totally different in the image. And that was based on the test screening. The audience did the ending. The end was sad. And the audience loved the movie so much. Ultimately, this was, it was up to Jordan. Of course. Of course. But we were there with Jordan and the movie ended. It's usually I'm a little more diplomatic about it. But with that movie, you could feel it.

39:56It was so good. I was like, Jordan, the movie just, the curtain went down. I think, Jordan, we got to change the end. Like, we got to have a happy ending. Like, Daniel Caluia in the original version wasn't a hero. You know, I think he went up in jail. And it was just like, that too dark. And he's so good. And you're to love that character so much. I said, you're cheating the audience. You got to, you got to, by the way, a lot of our movies. I don't always believe you should have a happy ending. But that movie you had to. So Jordan had a brilliant idea of a scene that we reshot. That he reshot for the end of the movie.

40:28So cool. But I love test screening. A lot of directors don't. But I love them. We make movies. We, not all movies are made for a broad audience. But for me, the magic, like we kind of talked about earlier, is how do I take a shot? I think it's a versus story and make it accessible to a super broad audience. And that, you can't do that without test screenings in my opinion. I believe that I don't look down on the audience. I think the audience is much more interested in something challenging. Maybe even hard to understand. Give me to. If it's compelling, that's what they want. They don't want the same old.

41:06They don't want the same old. They don't want the same old. I don't. But that's what they get. That's what they get. That's what they don't want it. I don't either. None of us do. None of us do. I think it's so funny. You know, you talk about the different way. If you, if you just think, here's a different way to think about what we're talking about. Vs. Vs. Exactly what you just said. If you just think about how a movie is, how a big expensive movie is greenlit. There's only one way to responsibly do it. And if I was running a studio, which I never will, and I don't have any desire to do that.

41:41But I wouldn't change this particular process, because it's the only responsible way to do it. The movie costs $150 million, and it's whatever. It's an action movie with these two people. You can't get that company to give you the money, unless five very bright people, the head of marketing, the head of international, the head of distribution, the head of home entertainment, or digital, whatever it's called, come in and say, this movie should play, like these four other movies from the past five years. If you have nothing to point back to, to compare it to, it can't get made. It can't even get past a greenlight.

42:16So then it's always going to be the same as it. So it's always, now when you make a movie for seven or ten, or whatever, our price point is, we get to say the opposite. We get to go in and say, I can't think of a single thing this is like. Let's make it. Exactly. Which is the best. It's the most fun. We're totally different. Totally different. Now, if you make a movie for seven versus a big company making a movie for seven, how would the seven be spent differently? It's more that a big company just can't make a movie for seven. They can't make it for seven. It's just too hard to do. There are too many people involved, too many decisions, because that's what I mean.

43:00The apparatus is set up to make it for 80 or 100. So you can't have that apparatus. You have to be free. You can't hold up decisions. The whole approach has to be different when you make low budget movies. So it's not that they, there is really no, like Warner Brothers, I don't know if they ever made a movie for seven million dollars. Only when they do a similar version to what, I don't know what Magic Mike was, but like, they give the director or the producer the money. They say, come back with the movie. But they can't be an active producer on low budget movies like that. Any studio.

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44:37These minerals help conduct the electricity that powers your nervous system so you can perform it your very best. Element, electrolytes are sugar -free, keto -friendly, and great tasting. Minerals are the stuff of life. So visit drinklmnt .com slash tetra. And stay salty with Element, Electrolights. L -M -N -T How many people are at Blumhouse? We have like 85 people. That's a lot. But tell me what do they do? 35 are in TV, 35 are in movies, and 20 do both. And are many of them producers? What would be the job titles range? The job titles was, so there's a creative group for both, which would be like pretty creative executives for TV.

45:35So they're about 10 creative executives, maybe five for each group, a little bit more for TV. But then we have, you know, because we're running the movies, we're acting like a financier, even though sometimes it's our money, but it's usually not our money. So we have to have business affairs, we have to have lawyers, we have to have a CFO, we have accounting, we have marketing, communications. So whether it's your money or not, you run the whole thing. And if we go over budget, we're on the hook. Because you can't ask for someone to give you the money and then say, whoops, so if you got it, if you're going to be a grown -up, you got to be a grown -up, you got to take a good with the bad.

46:09So when we're running the production, if there's a COVID shutdown, we got to fight insurance or pay for it. How do you decide, do you decide when a project comes in, it's more right for a movie, it's more right for TV, or is that already always assumed beforehand? It's not assumed if it's like a book or an article or a remake. Sometimes that could be a series too. And how often does that, do those things happen? Those examples you just gave. Like a book, I'm seeing a book. We option 10 or 15 books or maybe 10 books or articles a year. Not that much. And how many of those end up getting there? 80%.

46:46I mean, we make a lot. You make a lot. We have very little development that we don't. We have more in TV. Yeah. Because our TV company focus like a more traditional company. The TV company, they're really what I, in my head, I think about the TV company as using the brand of the movie company to push forward stories that we like in television. But there's no equivalent because there's no back end in TV. You can't make low budget TV. Yeah. I tell you something crazy. When we budget all the platforms, they could, if anyone's listening, they'll humble and mumble. But everyone does this. When we budget a movie, we make it as low as we possibly can because we get profit.

47:24When you budget the TV show, anyone who budgets the TV show, you do the opposite. When they say, what's the budget of the show? You say, make it as expensive, exit, can possibly be. Because your paid is a percentage of how much it cost. Which makes no sense for anyone. For anyone. For us, for the fee, it's an existence. But there's no version of sharing in television. So there's no incentive to make low budget television. So we can't take our model of how we make movies and apply it to TV. We can only take the brand, Blumhouse, and apply that to the things that we're making in TV. And this is a little bit.

47:57We talked about this a little bit. But where would you say the money is wasted in major movies? The way normal movies are made. The biggest waste of the money is, like we were talking about before, is the upfront payments to producers, to directors, to writers. They shouldn't be, we all should have equity in what we're doing, I think. Not everything, but most things. And there's a big incentive for it to perform. Of course. There's no incentive. There's no incentive. You're not alive. No, it's a very specific incentive. The director, in a traditional movie, the director's been paid, the director's at a test screening, the director's thinking about one thing, whether they admit it or not.

48:36Critics. And critics and audiences are not in sync. The studio is thinking about one thing too. Audiences. The director's been paid. The director's made their thing. The director's next gig. Does it depend on the box office? Of course. They can't make it really. But it depends just as much, if not more, on the critical reviews. If the movie's 100 % or 98 % and run tomatoes, even if it doesn't do that well, that director's every actor wants to work with that director. And so you set up, before the movies touched the world, two different agendas between the director and the studio and the financier, which is funny because it just, every conversation, it's just everyone's talking around that.

49:17But everyone, that's what's going on. And every creative, when there's a disagreement between the director and the studio, that's what it's about, Jen. Do the critics matter as much today as they did in the past? They don't matter. I don't think they matter that much to the audience. Although they still matter, like if your movie has really been panned, that information gets out quickly. But it does really matter to the other artists. Like if you, if you're a director, everyone hasn't liked your movie, it's going to get hard to get actors to trust you, and they still matter, I think. I'm surprised in your paranormal story that that first critical reaction was such an important piece of it.

49:55It was important. I would have never guessed that. Even that, though, wasn't enough. I thought that was going to be like, I'll get the press. That wasn't enough. And then when the movie came out, I think it got pretty good reviews. But reviews are more important than we all like to give people credit for. I always say the critics don't matter when a movie gets bad reviews. And when the movies get good reviews, they say the critics are very important.

50:21Yeah, seems to me word -a -mouth is the key to everything. Word -a -mouth is so important. It's the most important. Yeah. And especially because word -a -mouth now takes five seconds. What do you think is about the horror genre? Why do we like horror movies? I don't. But why do I think horror movies? I get it. I get it. I think the biggest reason there's been a million answers to that question they've all been said a million times. But this has been said before. But to me, what resonates the most is that the idea of seeing people or seeing threatening situations that are totally within your control.

50:53So you get to experience the scary situation. From the safety of your theater scene. Exactly. You can turn it off. You can walk into the bathroom. And I think that is really, really profound for people. That's interesting. I think it really does on some level make people feel the world is safer as a result of it. Yeah. Their lives are safer. And the normal stuff getting a adrenaline going on a roller coaster jumping out of a plane. I mean, there's that too. But I think that's really secondary to the world is so threatening and so out of my control. Here's where I could see and experience threats up close and control everything.

51:28That's really appealing to a big group of people. Not everybody. No, but it's a big group. 40 % of the population are some things. It's interesting. It's interesting. Yeah. And how would you describe the different subgenres within horror? There's, well, I'm going to ask your question a different way. Okay. Which is there's supernatural and realistic and gory and not gory and science fiction horror and family drama, but there's really, finally, two kinds of horror. And when you see more indie horror and when people don't understand horror, we did a movie called The Bay. Barry Levinson lives in the Chesapeake Bay and he was rightly concerned about the pollution in the Chesapeake Bay and his agent, John Burnham, at the time said, you know, you should do a horror movie about it.

52:18He said, good idea. And he wrote this movie called The Bay. That's a great idea. It was good idea. It was a great idea. Except for the second part. Okay. So John tells him right away, right, so we made it. We made it. We made it the Bay. And I use this because Barry was an example of this and you see this a lot. If you're kind of stepping into horror without understanding it and it's for whatever reason I articulate this and it doesn't land, horror is just gross. So in other words, horror is just seeing someone with a cut or their foot hanging off or like their ear being cut off. It's just gross.

52:55And that to me, in the case of The Bay, it was like these parasites like eating people, that is not horror. That's like showing gross stuff. Horror is you're watching and you're scared. You're not grossed out. You're not like, ugh, you're scared. Now, we have done plenty of movies where there is very violent stuff in them. But a lot of our movies, you don't, you like invisible man, for instance, you don't see, there's very little violence. And a lot of our movies are PG -13, Megan just came out as PG -13. And Megan's a less good example because Megan, there's a lot of humor, which also is an important component to horror.

53:34But, which I could talk about in a second. But what real horror does in my mind is scare the Jesus out of you. And the way that you do that, if you're talking to someone who doesn't really get horror, they either say, they're just like, this isn't just going to be amazing. We chop ten heads off in the first place. It's like, no, that's just gross. And the other thing they'll talk about is like, if they're talking about a scare, and they're like, tell me the jump scares. What are the scares? Whenever you're on my side of the desk and someone says, what are the scares? You know that person isn't really a horror fan.

54:10Because the scares in horror movies are all the same. It's like a bird flies into the window, a door closes on its own, a light goes on. Like the scares aren't what's original, what makes horror movies work. Is the story in between the scares, the drama in between the scares. Sometimes we have a litmus test in our office when we're deciding to make something like, if you take out all the set pieces, all the scary stuff, is there like a indie drama that you're on the edge of your seat? The opening of Get Out, you have this white girl and this black guy, and they're dating. You've seen a little bit of their background, and then they're in the car, right?

54:45And then they're talking. And it's like super fraught. Like her parents are kind of racists, but she's kind of not aware of it. It's Jordan's writing. It's brilliant. And you like her, and you like him, but you're like, on the edge of your seat, because race, it's being danced around, and you're like, uh, dear hits the window. And dear say to window in 9 million horror movies. But when that dear hits the window, you jump. You don't jump because you're, you jump because you're so involved. Yes, yes, yes. And you're just, you're pulled in, and a great director of horror knows how to pull you in so that when you, they scare you, you jump, and they don't need to show you something gross.

55:27You could jump at something tiny. And, uh... Did Jordan pitch you that movie? How did the movie come to be? Uh... I've talked about it too much this afternoon. Uh... I talked about it a lot because it checks every box. You know, it was a 4 .5 million dollar movie. It was not a movie that would have been ever made by anyone in a million years. It just, the cast was all paid with back end. It really checks every box. That's why I brought it up a lot besides the fact that it was one of my favorite movies we ever made. He gave us the script, and the script, a lot of people had read the script, and no one wanted to make it.

55:57Just like I said, it wasn't like some... A lot of the movies that we do are not... Um... We have like this new spec horror movie. Like there were two or three big specs that have sold in the last eight weeks that we got and didn't bid on. It'll be interesting to see what happens with them, but we don't... I don't like chasing. I really don't like chasing. We sometimes do it. If we believe in it and everyone else is chasing, then we do it. But I think usually more often than not. If you look at like the big IP sales, especially with relates to horror, and then the results, there's very little correlation.

56:28Yeah. I knew you're in the alternative business. If everybody wants it... It's something's wrong with that. Something's wrong with that. Yeah, yeah. Something's wrong with that. Yeah, yeah. Two middle of the road. Two middle of the road. Two middle of the road. Yeah. Where's the line between horror and camp? Because I feel like camps are another piece of horror. Well, comedy is a crucial part of horror. Now, not all of our movies have funny stuff in them, but 90 % of them do. And some of them are 50%. If you look at the third paranormal activity movie, it's half jokes and half scares. If you look at Happy Death Day, Happy Death Day to you, this movie we...

57:09Terrific movie did called Freaky Christopher Landon is incredible at it. The insidious movies, Lee One L, is amazing at understanding... And James Wan, understanding horror's relationship to comedy, which is very specific, which is simply this. That feeling I described at that scene and get out, you can't keep the audience there. You're pulling the reins too tight. You can keep them there for a few minutes. But an audience isn't going to stay on the edge of their seat. They're not going to stay there, right? So, one of the ways to relax the audience so that they're even more scared is with comedy.

57:45So, if you're 20 minutes into a horror movie and you have this really funny scene, which plays into the tone of the movie and is believable, it can just be tacked on there. But if people are doing funny stuff, it relaxes the audience. Like, oh, I know these people are funny, so when the scare comes, it's much more effective. It's also... This is a movie not often associated with horror, but we think about it a lot. And again, it doesn't apply to all of our movies, but most of our 80 to 90 % of our horror movies have a lot of fun in them. And I think that really helps is if the movies at times feel fun.

58:20If it's just one long dark ride. Now, there's one filmmaker that we work with who breaks that rule. Because I generally think one long dark ride is not very interesting. Scott Derrickson, who we did sinister with and we did a black phone with, we're going to do a sequel to black phone. He's one of the very, very few filmmakers who can just... There's like... I don't... I mean, there's a little stuff with the kids, but there's black phone. If you look at it, it's just a serious, dark movie, but it's amazing. And it was a big hit. And you know, to bring it back to our conversation earlier, the indie movie that was black phone was Scott...

59:04Scott had a really tough childhood. And it wasn't... It's not an autobiographical by any stretch in terms of actual events, but in terms of his feeling and the feelings of his childhood. Like, black phone is really like Scott Derrickson's indie version movie of his own childhood, but it's wrapped up in like the scariest movie ever. And sinister, which we made 10 years ago with him, Ethan Hawker, like I said, I produce theater with him. He's a great old friend of mine. And we've done many projects, we've done 10 or 12 movies and TV shows together. And he really did not like horror ever. And he's like, I'm never going to do a horror movie.

59:43I try to talk him in, try to talk him in. And actually, he wanted the sinister and the approach we've done a bunch in that black phone. But I got him into it by sinister. And it was the first horror movie Ethan ever did. And the way I pitched it to him was I said, look, and he and I share a lot of indie movies. And I said, Ethan, this movie is so... Stop thinking about the horror scenes in it. Sinister, the plot of sinister is a husband and wife, and the husband is a writer. He's a true crime writer, and his career isn't going that well. And he moves his family into a house where this horrible thing took place.

1:00:16So he can write his next book about it. But the house is haunted. But he puts his own ambition in front of the safety of his family. It's great. And then Ethan was like, oh, I like that I like. And Scott, he met with Scott and Scott. And that was how Ethan, we got Ethan into horror. But I went on a tangent there. But Scott can really tell a dark story for beginning to end. And it's so incredibly compelling. But we don't do that very often.

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1:02:02Do you pick projects based on the script or based on the filmmaker? I pick projects more based on the filmmaker. The filmmaker. So if you like someone's vision, the script is less of an issue. A hundred percent, and I think we're the only, I don't know if no one would admit that, or if we're actually the only place that does that. But that's a big difference between how we choose and how other people choose. Now, my wife would tell you that's because, you know, my reading comprehension is terrible, which is probably true. But if I believe in the director's work, and I meet the director, and I hear him talk about what he, what I just read, get out was a great example.

1:02:49I didn't read that script, it'd be like, this is amazing. In fact, I read the script. I didn't really understand the movie, the script. And I talked to Jordan about that. And I said, there was a scene, I remember on our first meeting, there was a scene where it's all white people at the party, except for a few black people, and they acknowledge each other. The black people acknowledge each other. Like, isn't this wild word, this party where there's three of us and a hundred white people? And I remember saying to Jordan, like, is that, do you do that? Like, does that happen? And Jordan's like, yeah, you do that.

1:03:20Yeah. He's like, when you're at a party, and it's all, there's two black people, you do acknowledge that. And I remember, based on that, and based on the way Jordan spoke about the script, thinking, screw it, let's do it. And that is the rule, not the exception. Joel Edgerton, we did this movie, it was originally called Weirdo, and then it was called The Gift. And I don't know if the script was good, but the way Joel talked about it was so compelling. And I, I'm much more bent on the movie side of the company, on the filmmaker, on the filmmaker's vision, on the, the funniest story about this is Whiplash.

1:03:58We have a great, amazing head of production, and that's funding another unusual thing about the company, is the senior executives have been with us a long time. And we really have a shorthand with each other. And the person who's run the movie side of the company is a man named Cooper Samuel Sun, who's my creative partner, and, uh, much better reader than me. And, uh, and when he first started, this is a horror movie company, he brings me the script of Whiplash. I'm like, dude, what are you doing? Like, I've read this script. I didn't know. I'm like, oh, you know, not a drummer. Like, oh, I guess.

1:04:34I mean, I have no idea, but it's not a horror movie, so we're not making it. Right. So Cooper was very, very smart guy, and Cooper, uh, knew that Jason Wrightman was one of my favorite directors, 10 or 15 years ago in Everwood, Whiplash happened. And, uh, he kind of quietly gave the script to Jason Wrightman, and Jason Wright, he got him to read it miraculously. He knew a woman who worked for Jason, and, uh, and Jason said, I'll produce it, and Cooper came kind of bounding into my office, and said, do you want a partner with Jason Wrightman? I never met Jason Wrightman, he was just admired him.

1:05:00Yeah. Yeah, I want a partner with him. Of course. Of course. And, uh, and so we did Whiplash, and that had everything to do talking about people with Jason Wrightman, you know, that was, I mean, the director hadn't done anything. And I don't, like I said, I don't know, I don't know, what do you think? Do you think I'm alone in that? Do you think people just don't like to admit that? Because you want to sound like, oh, I read this script. I always wonder like, I feel like people want to say, I knew when I read this script, so they don't admit it. I've not read many scripts, because I feel like when I read the script, I have no idea what that movie is.

1:05:32It could be anything. It's so hard. It could be anything. I mean, I've been doing it for years, and I still, it's like a blueprint for something. Yeah. I would always, even with music videos back in the days of music videos, I would always do it based on the person's other work. If the person's other work was great, and if they had an idea they felt strongly about, that's what we do. That's what we do. Same. That's what we do. That's interesting. Yeah. Yeah. I think it's hard on people's ego to say that, because I think that ego, there's some pride in like, I read it and I knew. Really? I think so.

1:06:13Maybe that's so wild. I think that's why. I think that's why. I think that's why people want to be like, I recognize a great story. No matter who wrote it, I think there's, I don't care. It doesn't matter. You don't get any credit for it. You don't get any, and for anything, all of the ego -based stuff, you don't get credit for it. All that matters is, you make something good, you make something you love, other people like it, win. Great. Everybody wins. It doesn't matter how or why. It doesn't matter. Not at all. But that's such a, it's such a funny thing. It seems so obvious. It seems so obvious.

1:06:46Is there ever a topic too hot to touch in a movie? Too contravertical. No. I don't think if you have an inventive director, there is, we did a movie called The Hunt, which goes in my top three kind of biggest regrets, and not in my life, in my professional life, which is inevitable if you produce any amount of anything, which is when you make something that you think is just so great, and it doesn't connect. And in this case, this was on the way to connecting and Trump tweeted about it, so we had to stop, but it was a huge thing. Tell me the story. I don't know the story at all. And what, tell me what the film is about.

1:07:23Damon Lindelof, and Nick Cruz, and Craig Zobel, made a movie called The Hunt, which was about liberals shooting red -state people for sport. And it was a comment on, it wasn't pro -red or pro -blue, clearly, it was a comment on the dividedness in America, a very hot topic. It was, when Trump was president, and it was the opposite of a Hollywood liberal play. It really wasn't that. And it wasn't either. It wasn't Yellowstone either. It was like really trying to comment on just how insane the dialogue on both extremes had gotten. That's what it was about. Which, if you started a pitch, to me like that, right now, I'd say, you can't make a movie like this, but these guys came up with a brilliant, brilliant idea.

1:08:16It was so good. And then what breaks your heart more is, sometimes you come up with a great idea, and the execution isn't great, but the execution is perfect. Wow. Perfect. And the movie is testing, and it tests exactly like we wanted to, and the audience is exacting, right? And everything is great. And the marketing is perfect. And the movie, we're marching towards the release of the movie, and we have three, on the way a movie is distributed about three months before the theatrical release, the marketing starts to seep into the culture. Again, totally different than streaming, but on a theatrical movie, three months, two months, and real money starts to get spent eight weeks, six weeks, four weeks, real money, real, real big money in buying TV spots, and all the other stuff.

1:09:02And this is going, everything is going to go right. It's going to be a hit movie, and my dream kind of hit movie, because not just financial success, but it's going to touch culture in a way that you really hope. And in this case, I'll just call her out. My dear friend, Kim Masters, wrote a story and hadn't read the script. And the story implied she hadn't didn't know what the story of the movie was. And she, whatever, I didn't hurt a fan. She said she, she, she, no one responded to it. I don't know what that'll happen. Anyway, she wrote a story that didn't represent what the movie was. And somehow that got picked up and picked up and picked up.

1:09:38And Trump tweeted, like something very derogatory about the hunt being a Hollywood liberal thing, which it was not. But then, Trump followers said, we hate Hollywood, and anyone that has anything to do with the term, the hunt we're going to threaten you. So they threatened me, and they threatened Donna, who runs the studio, and it was all based on a misunderstanding. The movie was actually made about this particular thing, and it wasn't a liberal movie at all. But the decision, it looked like the people in the theme parks, the universal theme parks, like there were bomb scares for the theme parks.

1:10:20And when that happened, it was Universal's decision, and I think it was the right decision, because it's only a movie. It's not worth risking people's lives, real lives, and they pulled it off the schedule. And then when a movie comes off the schedule, it's so close to release, it has a taint on it. So then it was re -released, but when it was re -released, the marketing for the movie, which applies to everything that we just said, the movie was being marketed as a great scary genre movie about people hunting people. Like that's how you have people to see it. But then we had to change it to market it like a satire, which is what it really was.

1:10:56But no one wants to go see a satire. So the movie bombed, and it broke my heart. But you asked me if there's any topic that's too hot. Oh yeah, too hot. And I think it depends on the artist, but I don't think there's any topic too hot. Do you? No. No, I don't think so. No, not at all. I like the idea of the most interesting things are challenging. And if you can find a way to make something challenging, that really gets people to think, that's what we're here for. Totally. Totally, I agree with that. Nothing is black and white. You know, it's all, we're dealing with so many shades of grace, just interesting to see, well, I never thought of it like that.

1:11:33You know, I never thought of it like that. Yeah, yeah, I agree. That's a wild story. It was an amazing year that year. And the actress was terrific. Her name was Betty Gilpin, and she's a great actress. It was going to be a big thing. It was really, I've had a couple of those. I'm sure you've had them too. We get so frustrating when you're so close. I love that you're as passionate about it as you are. After doing it as long as you have, it's great. I am so passionate about it. It's great. Yeah, it's a good sign. Yeah, well, I like that. You're doing the right thing. You found the right job. I did definitely find the right job.

1:12:06I'm very grateful for that. Content -wise, the difference between TV and movies as it relates to content, is there a difference? Should there be a difference? What goes where and why? Well, I would tell you the pandemic and the recent events have totally changed my thinking on this. If you listened to an interview of me from five years ago, I would have said, it doesn't matter. One's two hours. One's told over a long period of time. It's the same thing. I now have a totally different point of view because we were all fed TV for so long, and the movies were taken away. So of course, your point of view changes.

1:12:40I think content -wise, they are completely different. And I think that a movie is much more dependent on marketing. So, especially now, because most streamers market minimally or not at all. So, a movie you can't do that. You have to have very substantial marketing. So, a movie you have to have an idea that can be sold in 15 or 30 seconds. I think that you kind of have to have that. And that's good or bad, but it's just a fact. Have there been any big movies post -pandemic? There have been big movies. Topken was a really big movie. There was Spider -Man during the pandemic. Avatar. The second Avatar was huge.

1:13:21It was bigger than it was huge movie. But that's commercially, financially. Have there been culturally impactful movies since the pandemic? I would say no. Now, a lot of people would beg to disagree. No, but can there be? I have a theory. I'm very curious to your theory about this. I have a theory that COVID crushed the soul of artists in some way. And we're seeing the result and its tapering off. But television business, the movie is particularly like, I think not interacting with each other in the world, surprise, surprise, was really not good for the beautiful artists in the world. Not good for anyone.

1:14:03Not good for anybody. It's terrible for all of us. But the art that was created, at least in my view, in my world, really suffered. And I think it's going, I definitely think it's coming back. But I think you can't stare at your phone all day long and then create. That's not, that's not, that's not, that's not, that's not, that's not, would you say the same? I mean, do you think that happened in music? I'm curious. I don't know, I'm curious. And I'd love to see, you know, a breakthrough movie where all my friends like, you have to go see this movie, you have to see it in the theater. I would love that to happen.

1:14:35And in that last movie that I saw in the theater was Quentin Tarantino's last movie. And I loved it. It's amazing. I love it. It was amazing. He's one of our great artists. And how classy is it? Yeah. And I barely know him and I have no reason to kiss his ass. I just think if he sticks to it, I have so much deep profound respect for someone who says, I'm making ten of these and I'm out. Yeah. If he sticks to it, I have mixed feelings. Why? Because I want more. And so just as a, as a consumer, you're a fan. I'm a fan. Why are you taking it away? You can still do it. I do too, but I will subvert that just because I think it's so, if he does it, it's so elegant.

1:15:22You know, I've been thinking, I, someone, I was at a dinner for, we have kind of a mentorship program of, it's called Scream Writer. So young people who want to write Scaring movies. And I was asked a question, like, what have you, haven't you done in movie or TV that you would like to still do? Right? I used to be an Oscar, but I don't, it's not on a bucket list anymore. I'd love to do a living. But it's not like, when I was 40, it's all I could think about, right? And I said a graceful exit. I have not achieved a graceful exit. And I think probably every business, that's nice. But certainly the movie and TV business, it's, it seems hard for anyone to kind of have a graceful exit.

1:16:04And I just admire Quinn. If he does it, a graceful exit. It's so, it's so elegant to me. I can't wait for the next one. Well, he's got one more. Yeah. He's got one more. And yeah, yeah. So you said you think of movies and TV content -wise is different things. What's different? Why is it different? Well, on a fundamental level, a television streaming multi -part is a, is much more character based, and a movie is much more plot based. A movie you have to hit 20 points, you have a beginning, middle, and end. And that's what movies are really about is moving the plot forward, much less about getting to know the people.

1:16:39And television is about trying to get the audience to really intimately connect with who? Who someone is? Because they have the real estate, they have the time to do that. So that's fundamentally the difference. Have there been any horror based series on TV? There been a few. Mike Flanagan is probably the shining star. He's someone we've worked with a lot. He's a terrific filmmaker also. The haunting of Hill House. And he's done a couple others. Actually, there's two people who do it. Him and Ryan Murphy does it incredibly well. But it's much harder. It's virtually impossible to really scare someone on TV.

1:17:18First of all, you're watching in your bedroom, you're on Twitter, you're kind of, or whatever. Distracted. Distracted. The lights are on. And second of all, it breaks. And third of all, you're trying to make the story longer. So you can't properly scare someone with it. You can freak them out, the watcher. You can disturb them. But you can't really make them jump out of a chair like you can in a movie. Tell me about the state of the independent movie business. Current state. Let's see. The current state of the independent movie business. You know, as much as the tendency is to say, like, oh, it's so much better because of streaming or, oh, it's so much worse or, oh, it's so much different.

1:17:58It's fundamentally been the same for the 30 years I've been doing this, which is that it's a very, it's a fascinating business. It exists to whole its own ecosystem. It's only probably less than 10 % of the market. So less than 10 % of the movies that any people see less, well less than 10 % are actually indie movies. But yet, independent Sundance. I'm on the board of Sundance. I love Sundance. I love Sundance. Has that been the case for the 30 years? Yeah. It's always. Is that going to see Star Wars? They're not going to see any, but in New York and LA, that's what everybody talks about. It's indie movies.

1:18:35But they have such a small place in the ecosystem of the overall movie business. But you don't take that in when you're living in LA or living in New York, which I think is interesting. And it's a wild business because the movie business attracts capital from dull different plate. Usually rich people who want to play in the movie business. And there always been a terrible investment and they still are. But five times a year, one sells for a lot of money and it keeps it going. You know, in the Sundance, this year is not that difference than Sundance 15 years ago. The dollars are higher. But it's kind of the same.

1:19:08You ever surprised by what ends up being commercial? Am I surprised by what ends up being commercial? If you ever see a movie where you feel like, oh, this is not commercial, no one's going to like it. And then it really works. And it really works. I mean, yes, for sure, that's happened. I'm just trying to think of the examples. I mean, of course, that happens all the time. In Citius 2, for instance, opened to three times. The first in Citius opened to like 15 in the next in Citius opened to 42 million dollars. I thought the movie was same director. I thought the movie was very good. I didn't always shocking that it was that successful.

1:19:45And yeah, the movie business, that's what's so fun about it is. The movie business continually surprises Split. It's a bit M Night, Shyamalan's second movie we did. We did a movie with him called The Visit. And then we made this movie with him called Split. Split's our highest or second highest grossing movie of all time. Movie is terrific. It's amazing. I was, it's Sundance when it came out. It did $2 million on Thursday night. Which on Thursday night, everyone is a kind of important night. But it's indicative of nothing. It's just there's a lot of pressure on it. But it really, it doesn't. And I remember I talked tonight on Friday.

1:20:18And he said, look Jason, I have a theory that if a movie does $2 million on a Thursday, it's a 20 multiple for the weekend. And I remember thinking like, you're insane, dude. Your movie's never come Sunday. It did $40 million. So the answer is yes. Wow. That's amazing. It's fun, not part of the business. It's fun. How did you end up in business with him? Because he had done big budget mainstream movies before working with you. That's kind of a good story too. We did three movies with him. We did the visit. We did a split and we did glass. And there I told you, paranormal activity was finished when we came on it.

1:20:54And there were two other movies that we did like that. The visit was the second and this other movie called Unfriended. It was the third again, but the best one. How did the visit get made? The best way to produce a movie. I'll tell you so I went to Philadelphia well before the visit. Night lives in Pennsylvania outside of Philly. I went to his camp. I pitched him Blum House. I said, you got to work with us. I pitched everything that I pitched you here today. Low budget creative freedom. I had a rip sweater. He always makes fun that I had a hole in my sweater. And I went back. I never heard from him again.

1:21:26Two years goes by. He calls me. He says, I did it. He said, what do you mean? He said, I did everything you said. I said, but what about with us? He said, no, I didn't do it with you. I said, I don't need you. I said, I put up my own $5 million. Why do I need your $5 million, which was hilarious? I said, great. I said, good for you. I mean, you know, congrats. He said, well now no one will buy the movie. I said, well, you should have done it with us. I said, let me see the movie. And the movie, it was then called sundowning, was the visit. And the visit was a similar thing as paranormal. Not, not, not, I mean, it was similar.

1:22:00Everyone kind of saw it. Everyone had passed on it. And I watched it. And I loved it. And I said, there's a great movie in here. And he rejiggered it a lot. And we did it with Universal. And it was a big success. It was a big success. Now that you've had the success that you've had. And with Universal over this period of time, are they more open to your... Universalism, they're the exact opposite of my early other studio days. They're amazing partners. They'll go with my wildfandom dreams. But now they look at you the way you look at a filmmaker who makes something you like and you trust. Is that the nature of the relationship?

1:22:37100%. That's the best of them. By the way, most things that I give them, the quiet conversation I have is, can you please not make this? I'm like, no, I'm making it. It's funny. That's great. But they're incredible partners. If I have anything that I really want to do, you know, they pretty much do. And our deal is not exclusive with them. So some things we do with other people. And I almost encourage them. I'm like, guys, if you don't get this, don't worry about it. Like, I'll make it. I have a good arrangement with Sony. And we have a couple movies coming out this summer with Sony. And it's a very great shorthand.

1:23:12And I just, you know, to your point, and you will understand this better than anybody, but I like it. That my company wouldn't work without that. It just wouldn't work. Yeah, it's just, it wouldn't be fun. It wouldn't be fun. You have to start from scratch after doing this so long. It's not worth it. It's just not so fun. Absolutely. You get to focus on the part that's interesting to you. Yeah. And they get to do the other part that they're good at. That they're great at. Yeah. Yeah. It's good. Are there more independent producers who work the way you work? I don't know very much about the film business.

1:23:44No. It sounds like the perfect model. It's a perfect model for me. It's not perfect for everyone. Producers who make bigger event movies will do small movies as like a hustle, as like a little side business, which occasionally works. But it's not, it's very different than if that's the guys who did smile. Very jealous. I wish we made it. We didn't make it. We had a great producers, fantastic producers, but they mostly make big movies. So they did great with Smile and God bless them and it was a huge success. But it's a one off and it's our business. So that's very different because it's not sexy to make cheap movies.

1:24:21You know, it's not just for reasons I talked about at the beginning of podcasts. There's this crazy golden rule. Like I'm producing $150 million dollar movie like somehow. It makes no sense to me. I know, but that's good for my business because that's what everybody chases. That's what the priorities at the studio, at the agencies, we have a DC movie, a Marvel movie, that's what people chase. It's good for us. And then there are indie producers who are definitely making low budget movies, but those movies are really targeted for that independent market that we talked about. So really a company that's solely on our movie business, solely focused on low budget studio movies, there isn't really anyone else doing that.

1:25:03In talking about the indie movie world, that there are these hundreds of pictures made that have no home. Yes. How did those get made? Like what's the thinking that allows hundreds of movies to get made with no idea how they're ever gonna get out? It's the most amazing part of our business. It gets made because a little bit of, what I was referring to is there's this kind of, two things, there's a sex appeal to the movie business that attracts people with money, that's one thing, but the second thing is, you read about the successes, you don't read about the failures, you read what you read about is the 10 movies that Sundance that sold for 10 figures.

1:25:44Sundance programs 150 movies, there are 150 new movies at Sundance. They've chosen from like 5 ,000. Wow. It's crazy how many movies they got. We're coming from. They just get made. They get cobbled together and everyone has a dream. It's like buying a lot of ticket. Why do all these people buy a lot of tickets when no one wins? It's a similar, and people, I guess now also technologically, you can make a movie with your phone. You can make a movie with your laptop. Very inexpensively, but it's kind of says this amazing thing about who we are, that just, and it's all over the world, movies come from Africa, Germany, and Russia, and just so many, and we're just, we just, people go out and they just do it.

1:26:30You know, I think it's amazing. It's the best. Yeah, it's great. It's great. All right, good. Thank you so much for doing this. Thank you.