Jason Blum teases latest horror venture, 'Five Nights at Freddy's'

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Jason Blum teases latest horror venture, 'Five Nights at Freddy's'

Published: 13 Nov. 2023, 16:55

LIM JEONG-WON
lim.jeongwon@joongang.co.kr

A scene from ″Five Nights at Freddy's,″ Blumhouse Production's latest horror film about a security guard who encounters haunted animalistic robots at a pizzeria [UNIVERSAL PICTURES]

Jason Blum, the American producer behind the creepy horror franchises “Paranormal Activity” (2007-21), “Insidious” (2010-23) and “The Purge” (2013-21), along with films “Oculus” (2013), “Get Out” (2017), “M3GAN” (2022) and many others, is exciting scary movie fans with his next venture with his production company, Blumhouse Productions.

Titled “Five Nights at Freddy’s," the film, directed by Emma Tammi, is about a guard who begins working at a pizzeria and encounters haunted animalistic robots who come alive at night. Based on a popular game of the same name, “Five Nights at Freddy’s” has topped box offices in more than 60 countries so far. The film is set to premiere in Korea on Wednesday.

“I think the film was successful because we did something unusual for Hollywood with ‘Five Nights at Freddy’s,’” Blum said during an online interview with Korean reporters on Monday. “Usually in Hollywood when we are adapting a game or a book, there is a real desire to broaden the fan base. But we made the decision to only make this movie for the existing fans. We weren’t going to try to water it down and broaden it.”

Jason Blum, producer, director and CEO of Blumhouse Productions, speaks during an online interview with Korean reporters Monday. [UNIVERSAL PICTURES]

The pros of adapting a popular game into a film are that there are people who already had an emotional connection to the game — but there were cons, too, Blum says.

“The cons were that everyone has a very specific idea of what the movie should be, and usually no one agrees,” Blum said. “So both the pro and con is that when you are making a movie from existing intellectual property, the expectations are very high and very specific. We spent eight months before we started shooting to get the animatronics right for the film, to try and satisfy those expectations.”

When asked about his vision and definition of horror, Blum said that people often mistake horror films for “just being gross,” and that the horror genre is perfect for trying to tell different subversive stories to a wider audience.

Main poster for ″Five Nights at Freddy's″ [UNIVERSAL PICTURES]

“Horror to me is scary, and it’s not gross — I think people sometimes don’t understand horror and they just think it should be disgusting; but to me, that is not horror,” Blum said. “Horror should be emotionally disturbing, and ‘Five Nights at Freddy’s’ is no exception to that. The reason I love horror is because I love unusual stories and subversive stories. I spent the first part of my career making independent films, and I became very frustrated because it is hard to find distribution and an audience for indie films. But with horror, it is easier to fit a story into the genre and find viewers for your films.”

The success of Blumhouse Productions is because the production company encourages artists to find new things and tools to work with, according to Blum.

“We really work very closely with our artists and talk about these things all the time,” Blum said. “I think our job as producers of these movies is to kind of walk a fine line between knowing what to make and what to cut out.”

A scene from ″Five Nights at Freddy's″ [UNIVERSAL PICTURES]

Blum also said an array of new films are getting ready to be released, and five will be released in 2024.

“We have a great movie coming out called ‘Night Swim,’ which will be released in the first quarter in Korea, I think. Then we have another called ‘Imaginary’ and another called ‘Speak No Evil,’ which James McAvoy stars in,” Blum said. “We also have two more which are currently untitled but will be released at the end of next year.”

BY LIM JEONG-WON [lim.jeongwon@joongang.co.kr]