Blumhouse, the extremely successful production company behind movies likeM3GAN,Get Out, andParanormal Activity, isgetting into horror games. That’s scary good news.
Blumhouse’s history as a film studio is remarkable because the company’s list of massive hits far outnumber its disappointments. Though Blumhouse has distributed dramas like Whiplash and BlacKkKlansman, founder Jason Blum has predominantly carved out a niche inhorror, one of the few genres where original stories still thrive.
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Blumhouse’s films are almost always in the low- to mid-budget range, which means that when they’re successful, the margins of success are wide. Blumhouse has had one of the biggest hits of 2023 so far with M3GAN, which cost $12 million and took advantage of January being a slow time for new releases to slay its way to $170 million. For another recent example, The Black Phone cost $16-18 million to make and, with a $161.4 million global haul, took in ten times its budget. That’s good, but Get Out is an example of just how successful the Blumhouse model can be. Jordan Peele’s feature directorial debut cost just $4.5 million to make, but was a massive success, bringing in $255.4 million around the world. That’s roughly 56 times its budget, and more than $200 million in pure profit.
I’vewritten beforeabout how low budgets present a low risk, high reward proposition. This year’s Skinamarink, which only made $2 million at the box office, was still a gigantic moneymaker because it only cost $15,000. When costs are low, there is a wider range of what success can mean. If Skinamarink had, somehow, made Get Out-sized money, that obviously would have been a huge success. But, at its low budget, it was still able to make 133 times what it cost to make.
Blumhouse basically invented this business model for horror. Back in 2007, the first Paranormal Activity cost a paltry $15,000 to make — just like Skinamarink. And, though Skinamarink has been successful with $2 million, Paranormal Activity grossed $193.4 million. Now, that’s some profit margin right there.
Blumhouse applying similar logic to games seems like a good thing. Blumhouse’s announcement stated that the budget for these gameswould likely max out around $10 million. If it keeps irs budgets in that range it would be a big step toward rebuilding the double-A game. As in movies, where the mid-budget movie has largely died, mid-budget games have similarly become less common since the ‘00s. We get lots of indie games and a smaller amount of huge budget triple-A games. Giving small teams a bigger budget to play with would help to fill out that missing middle.
Of course, games aren’t movies and there will be different challenges for Blumhouse as it pushes into the space. Blumhouse’s movies are largely theatrically released and there are far fewer movies released in theaters in a given week than there are games released on digital storefronts in the same time frame. Players have different behaviors than moviegoers, too. New games often aren’t primarily competing with other new games. Instead, they’re competing with live service games that players are committed to playing long term.
Blumhouse isn’t guaranteed success. But, if it keeps its budgets in that $10 million range, success will look different than it does for blockbuster releases.
