Jason Blum

In 2000, he founded Blumhouse Productions, which specializes in producing micro-budget movies that give directors full creative control over the projects.[11] Some of the films produced by Blum have been highly profitable, including horror film Paranormal Activity which was made for $15,000 and earned nearly $200 million.[15] NPR's Planet Money did a special podcast about how Blum's production house gets its success.[16]

Blum also produced Insidious (2010), Sinister (2012), The Purge (2013), and Happy Death Day (2017), all of which had successful sequels.[17] In 2014, he served as an executive producer on the television film The Normal Heart, which went on to win the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Television Movie. In 2015, he won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Documentary or Nonfiction Series for HBO's The Jinx. Blum produced the feature films BlacKkKlansman, Whiplash and Get Out, all of which earned him nominations for the Academy Award for Best Picture.[3]

In 2018, Blum said in an interview that the reason no woman had ever directed one of his horror films was that "there are not a lot of female directors (...) and even less who are inclined to do horror."[18] After much criticism on social media, in which lists of such directors were circulated,[19] he apologized for what he called his "dumb comments."[20] In 2019, Sophia Takal directed and co-wrote the studio's horror remake Black Christmas, which opened on December 13, the studio's first released film by a female director.[21]