Blumhouse Productions

Blumhouse works across film, television, and gaming, with horror as its central focus.[2] Founder Jason Blum serves as CEO.[2] The leadership team includes Abhijay Prakash as president, Melissa Aouate as president of television, and Couper Samuelson as president of feature films.[2] Blum was listed at No. 98 on The Hollywood Reporter's inaugural list of influential Hollywood personalities.[1]

Blumhouse Productions, LLC is listed as the sponsor of a company sweepstakes at 3960 Wilshire Blvd. in Los Angeles.[4]

Jason Blum founded Blumhouse and continues to lead it as CEO.[2] The company built its profile around horror and now describes its activities as spanning film, television, gaming, and experiential ventures.[2] In January 2024, it merged with James Wan's Atomic Monster. Blumhouse says the combined businesses have produced nearly 250 movies and television series.[2]

Blumhouse's defining business strategy centers on producing horror films at dramatically reduced costs while targeting wide theatrical audiences. Paranormal Activity, Insidious, The Purge, and their sequels collectively grossed more than $1.6 billion on combined budgets under $80 million.[1] Individual titles illustrate the model's effectiveness: The Visit earned $99 million worldwide against a $5 million budget, and Insidious: Chapter 3 returned $113 million globally on a $10 million investment.[1]

These reported results illustrate how relatively small production outlays can accompany substantial worldwide grosses at both the individual-film and franchise levels.

Blumhouse's significance in contemporary horror is closely associated with the commercial reach of its microbudget strategy, illustrated by franchise grosses that far exceeded reported budgets.[1] The company credits Get Out with helping catalyze a broader shift in the cultural reach of horror.[2] Fast Company named Blumhouse one of its Most Innovative Companies in 2024 and one of its Brands That Matter in 2023.[2]

The production of The Vigil also extended the company's slate into culturally specific horror rooted in Jewish ritual, Yiddish dialogue, Holocaust trauma, and Jewish demonology.[3][5]

Together with Atomic Monster following their January 2024 merger, Blumhouse says the combined companies have produced nearly 250 movies and television series.[2] The combined catalog includes Halloween, The Purge, The Black Phone, Annabelle, Paranormal Activity, The Exorcist, The Invisible Man, Insidious, M3GAN, and Five Nights at Freddy's, as well as titles in the Conjuring Universe.[2] The Black Phone, released June 24, 2022, was directed by Scott Derrickson from a screenplay he co-wrote with C. Robert Cargill, and starred Ethan Hawke, Mason Thames, Madeleine McGraw, Jeremy Davies, and James Ransone.[6] Jason Blum and Scott Cawthon are credited as producers of Five Nights at Freddy's 2, with Emma Tammi as director.[7]

Blumhouse's television division produces both scripted and unscripted programming.[2] Its listed projects include The Bondsman and Scarpetta for Prime Video, The Rainmaker for USA Network, and Worst Roommate Ever and Worst Ex Ever for Netflix.[2]

Blumhouse has extended its brand beyond traditional screen media through a recently launched games division. Titles under that banner include Fear the Spotlight, with Eyes of Hellfire and Sleep Awake in development.[2]

The company also invests in immersive and experiential properties. These include The Van newsletter, the Blumhouse Shop consumer products line, an annual presence at Universal Studios' Halloween Horror Nights, the Halfway to Halloween Film Festival, BlumFest, the Blumhouse HorrorVerse in Meta Horizon on Meta Quest, and a planned transformation of an exhibit space at the Stanley Hotel associated with The Shining.[2]

Jason Blum's Jewish identity figured directly in Blumhouse's involvement with The Vigil: he responded enthusiastically to the project, partly because of its Jewish themes.[3]

The Vigil was the directorial debut of Keith Thomas. It centers on Yakov, a young ex-Hasidic man who accepts a paid overnight watch over the body of a Holocaust survivor in an Orthodox neighborhood in Brooklyn. Jewish law requires that a body be accompanied from death until burial, and the film depicts terrifying events unfolding during that overnight vigil.[5] The story connects the dead man's Holocaust trauma with Yakov's own history of antisemitic violence, family tragedy, and his transition away from the haredi world.[3]

The film's supernatural antagonist is a mazzik—an invisible, lesser-known Jewish demon distinct from the golem or dybbuk—portrayed as an entity with a spark of life but no body or soul. Thomas developed the concept partly through research conducted for a master's thesis at Hebrew Union College.[3] While filming in Orthodox neighborhoods in Borough Park and Williamsburg, the production stationed real Orthodox rabbis around the perimeter of the set to explain the filming to passersby.[3]

The cast included actors with prior experience in Jewish-themed productions: Malky Goldman, known from Unorthodox, and Menashe Lustig, who starred in the 2017 semi-autobiographical film Menashe, described as one of the first modern-era films scripted in Yiddish.[5] The Vigil itself contains substantial Yiddish dialogue.[5]

Thomas and Blum discussed the possibility of a broader Jewish horror subset, with Thomas identifying Jewish mysticism and Kabbalah as potential sources for further stories.[3] At the time of the report, Thomas was also working with Blumhouse on a remake of Stephen King's Firestarter, previously adapted for the screen in 1984.[3]