A massive new feature piece about horror producer Jason Blum and his Blumhouse Productions label has gone online at Fortune which goes into the economics of his empire that began with the success of “Paranormal Activity” and is now almost 200 films strong.
The feature says “The Exorcist: Believer” is the company’s biggest gamble to date both financially and reputationally. In order to tackle the franchise, Universal Pictures had to guarantee the making of a trilogy and is spending $400 million upfront – a number that includes the three film’s budgets.
With a budget of $30 million for the first film, it’s three times the cost of a regular Blumhouse movie. In addition, there’s no back-end profit share for Blumhouse, and if it tanks the studio still has to make two more.
But they add that Blum has a back-up plan – “Five Nights at Freddy’s” which opens three weeks later on October 27th. It’s also expensive by Blumhouse standards at just over $20 million, but Blum says the film has already made back its production costs just from the sale of its streaming and theatrical distribution rights. In other words, it’s almost certainly going to be profitable.
Short-range projections for “The Exorcist: Believer” have the film pulling in a very healthy $30-36 million this weekend at the domestic box-office – in other words, it will make its entire production budget back in the North America alone in the first three days.
Long-range projections for “Five Nights at Freddy’s” have it sitting even higher with an opening weekend debut of around $33-42 million domestically right now – a number likely to go up in the coming weeks.
