Jason Blum Quotations

I think horror movies are still - this can be said of all movies - but being with a group of people scared together is more and more something unusual and fun. Especially for kids who are going out less generally.

I think there's a limit. People want to be scared, but not every weekend, maybe every third weekend.

The only way I think about kids in production is practically, the younger the kids are the harder it is to shot the movie.

I think the mistake people make with horror movies and what makes them successful is a lot of horror movies get made by people who don't really like them, so they don't respect them. And when you like horror and have admiration for it, that community knows that what's important for a horror movie is important for every other kind of movie.

Currently there's no other way to get a movie into 3,000 theaters except with a studio. We have a first-look deal with Universal, and it's been fun to work with them. But studios are a part of our life. I think they'll always be, but they'll play a different role. The consumer and the creator are getting closer together.

There's S-VOD, which is 3 1/2 months after the theatrical release. The windows are going to get closer and closer, and the sooner they collapse in my mind the better it'll be for everybody. It's coming, but change is hard. It will be more profitable for everybody, including exhibitors.

I love being the underdog. It's one of the reason I like making horror movies, because a lot of people don't like them or are prejudiced against them. So it's one of the many reasons I like horror and it's also the reason I like low budget, because it automatically makes us the underdog.

But, it's much easier to do that than produce the movies from scratch. It excites the same thing in me, whether we build it from the ground up, or whether we come on when the movie is done or almost done. The idea of supporting the underdog and getting a smaller movie out there in a big way is equally exciting.

Directors typically have three choices - you do a studio movie and get a paycheck up front, you do an independent movie, which is for your heart and you don't get paid up front and probably don't make any money on it, but it hopefully goes to Sundance and is more of an art movie, and then you do TV.

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.

I think good suspense and horror is really about creating situations that are relatable, and throwing a wrench in it and watching how people respond to it.

I think the most honest responses to the movies you get to watch are in houses and people's most private spaces, like the bedroom or in your own intimate space. I think that's where you feel safest, so when you're threatened in the place you feel safest, it makes for the scariest situations.

I really like to work with theater actors. Theater actors tend to do lots of independent movies, and those are the actors that I like.

The scares are the easier part of scary movies. The hard part of scary movies is what leads up to the scares.

A lot of the reasons why people are annoyed at found footage movies is because people look at it like it's easy and that they could do it, too.

I try to work with people who you're not used to seeing in scary movies. I think it makes for a more interesting mix, when you're watching the movie.

Horror is great storytelling with scary elements on top of it, but if you don't have great storytelling, you can have all the scares in the world, but the movie won't work.

You can't be a creative person and not fall in love with everything. Every movie I've made there's a complicated, twisted love affair with.

I really am passionate about making low-budget movies. You can try new stuff and unusual stuff, and you can break the rules.

We have creative freedom because of budgets. Ever since I have been doing low budget movies, we've really had creative freedom.

I'm a believer in screening movies early, and using the movie itself to help sell the movie. If you can't do that, I feel like you shouldn't be releasing the movie.

But one of the rules I don't like to break is we still do - 95% of our movies are low budget. 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.

The model we established was to give creative people complete creative freedom in exchange for betting on themselves, so they work for the minimums you're allowed to work for, and if the movies work in a big way, everyone does very well. If the movies don't, nobody loses too much money. The benefit to doing all the movies low budget is we can tell different types of stories and take creative risks. The Purge would have been irresponsible to do for $20M, but to do it for $3M makes sense.

I love musicals. I love horror movies and I love art movies.

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.

For me it's much more like a little kid rebelling. 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. I come from the business side and Mark comes from the creative side, but every time a decision came up about Creep it was two emails, and we agreed. I've not had that ever with someone on the creative or the business side.

My easiest judgment for a script is 'do I want to keep reading it?'

Let's keep making inexpensive movies.

For some reason, people value being scared less than they value laughing.

People love being scared, even for long periods of time.

I found that a lot of people ridiculed contemporary art. I decided I wanted to be involved in art everybody could understand.

I love Hitchcock movies. I took a Hitchcock class in college, so I saw all his movies. I wrote papers on his movies.

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.

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.

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.

There are so many factors that go into having a successful movie.. too many that you can't control.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I'm proud of 'Sinister' because Scott and Cargill did a great job on the movie, and I set up a framework for them to make what they wanted to make. They gave me the idea, and I figured out how to get it out into the world.

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.

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.

I read an interview where someone said, 'It's a shame that anyone can make a movie now,' and I feel the exact opposite.

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.