Ethan Hawke stars in Blumhouse and Universal’s “The Black Phone”.
Universal
The world of video games is about to get scarier.
Blum’s housepowerhouse television and horror film production company, said Tuesday it will launch Blumhouse Games.
“We have been looking to build a team to start approaching growth opportunities in interactive media for a while,” said Abhijay Prakash, president of Blumhouse. “As we sat with Zach and Don, they articulated a Blumhouse model-appropriate approach, and we knew it was the perfect place for us to start pushing into the interactive space.”
Blumhouse Games will partner with indie game developers and target indie games with budgets under $10 million. This is a similar strategy to how the company handles the production of its movie content. Blumhouse often operates with a small production budget and then makes big profits at the box office.
The company that has revolutionized horror genre over the past decade, turning small-budget movies into huge box office revenue. The studio has been responsible for producing the popular and profitable films “Paranormal Activity” as well as the Oscar-winning film “Get Out”.
“Paranormal Activity,” which was released in 2009, had a budget of just $15,000 and went on to earn over $107 million in the US and nearly $200 million worldwide.
The company plans to invest in horror-themed games for consoles, PCs, and mobile devices.
To lead Blumhouse Games, the company recruited video game industry veteran Zach Woods as group president and Don Sechler as chief financial officer.
Wood has been a video game maker for over 25 years and publishes games on every platform including the Game Boy, Playstation, and Xbox. He’s worked on indie projects like “Sound Shapes” and “Hohokum” as well as larger projects like “Prey: Mooncrash” and “Redfall” for Arkane and Bethesda.
Sechler, who will head the finance department, previously worked for Sony and helped reform PlayStation’s relationship with third-party game creators.
Blumhouse is also work to merge with “The Conjuring” director James Wan’s Atomic Monster production company. The deal is expected to close this summer.
Disclosure: Comcast is the parent company of NBCUniversal and CNBC. NBCUniversal has a distribution contract with Blumhouse.
