One of the many exciting projects from Blumhouse is Halloween Kills, the second part of the rebooted Michael Myers trilogy that follows 2018’s rather good Halloween, directed by David Gordon Green. Gordon Green is back to pick up part two which arrives in theaters on October 16th to terrorize us once again. Talking to Den of Geek ahead of the release of The Invisible Man, Jason Blum revealed that he’s seen Halloween Kills and he thinks it rocks. “I just saw Halloween Kills. It was SO good. So good. It’s intense. It’s huge. It really feels really big,” he says. “We approach Halloween the same way we approach Invisible Man,” he explains. “We have a different approach than studios take for those movies and it doesn’t always bear fruit but but it does often and really the notion of forcing the filmmakers to work for a lower budget makes us able to bet on unusual creative choices. I think that applies for Leigh and Invisible Man and I think it applies for Halloween and there are a few others that we’re looking at that we’re going to do the same thing with. “The larger notion of taking the creative group and people who are very successful and have done very well and saying, ‘Listen, bet on yourself and if the thing works, you’ll make way more than you’ve ever made before in your life on one movie, and if it doesn’t, you won’t.’ I feel like it puts everyone in a great mindset – it’s like we’re all in this together. “You ally yourself in a funny way with your financial partner, whether it’s me or the studio like you’re all in the same boat. When the studio’s paid everyone so much money up front and then they have to wait for the movie to do well or not, that creates a contentious situation. It’s fraught already, you’ve already been paid as a filmmaker so you’re trying to make a movie that gets great reviews, you don’t really care about the commerce of the movie as much, because you’ve already made your check. You pretend to, but it’s different. Of course, it’s more nuanced than I’m saying. But a lot of that. I feel like when we take that kind of spirit into pieces of IP that are out there, we’re able to come up with inventive ways, or movies that feel different.” Blum says he embraces audiences’ reticence when it comes to tackling titles that have a very strong and devoted fan base. “I like the challenge of people being cynical,” he smiles. “When we first did Halloween everyone’s like ‘It’s gonna be horrible!’ and then people liked it. They don’t like everything that we do, but I do like the challenge – even with Invisible Man people are like ‘oh, what, are you gonna do Invisible Man?’ ‘The monsterverse hasn’t worked!’ This, that, everything else and then hopefully you give people a happy surprise.”
