Blum highlights “underrepresented” filmmakers on Amazon Prime | entertainment

Jason Blum is at the top of the horror hierarchy, but he doesn’t want to put the same horrors – or filmmakers – in front of the audience over and over again.

The mega-producer’s answer is the second part of Amazon Prime’s “Welcome to the Blumhouse” anthology of scare films, which appeared on the streamer on Friday.

“There are a lot of scripts that we see on the company’s film page that are films that should be made. They’re not necessarily the right ones for Universal, but they should be made and that would give me a chance to make them, ”the 52-year-old CEO and founder of Blumhouse Productions told the Daily News about the origins of the collection that he is Jens Salke attributes it to the head of Amazon Studios.

Blum – a three-time Oscar nominee for producing the nominations for best film “Whiplash”, “Get Out” and “BlacKkKlansman” – and Salke quickly decided that they “would select all filmmakers from underrepresented groups of people”.

“Welcome to the Blumhouse” made its debut in 2020 with four films, including “The Lie” by “The Killing” creator Veena Sud with Joey King and “Black Box” with Phylicia Rashad in the lead role.

This year’s line-up features Friday premieres: Gigi Saul Guerrero’s “Bingo Hell” about a senior citizen trying to protect her community from the deadly force that has overtaken the local bingo hall, and Maritte Lee Go’s “Black as Night” about a group from teenagers fighting vampires in New Orleans to Katrina.

Next Friday, Ryan will talk about Zaragoza’s “Madres” about a Mexican-American couple who moved to a California migrant farming community in the 1970s, where they struggle with bizarre symptoms and troubling visions while waiting for their first child to be born Axelle Carolyn’s “The Manor” starring Barbara Hershey as a woman who believes a supernatural force is killing her roommates in the nursing home.

Sending these films straight to the streaming, the Paranormal Activity producer explained, allows filmmakers to be “more creative and free” than a theatrical release, forcing them to “work within fairly narrow boundaries.”

And who in Hollywood can today better assess what makes something scary?

For Blum, “the key to a good horror story is obvious” [that] it has to be super creepy, intense and exciting “and ideally” it has to feel original. “