Exclusive: Jason Blum Talks Happy Death Day
Staci Layne Wilson
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Jason Blum is the founder and CEO of Blumhouse Productions, the maker of many a horror hit. Will Happy Death Day – being released this coming Friday the 13th – be big at the box office too? We caught up with the uber-producer to ask a few questions about how the film came about and what his role in it is, as far as how it was made.
Dread Central: Why did you want to produce a mixed-genre film like this?
Jason Blum: A time loop movie? I think there’s a lot of wish fulfilment in it. I think certainly – every day something happens I wish I could get to do over. So I feel like it’s really fun to watch someone actually get to do it. And that’s what I think the biggest thing about it is. You get to watch someone die twelve times!
DC: Why is Christopher Landon the perfect director for Happy Death Day?
JB: We’d made four movies with Chris, and I was really anxious to work with Chris again and really probably would have done pretty much anything he wanted to do. A couple of years had gone by and I had been needling him and finally he said I found something I like. So – I was gonna do it before I even read it. But I happily read it and was really pleased and he rewrote the original script entirely. I never read the original script, he told me a little bit about it, but he completely re-did it. And we did the movie because we believed in Chris and I then I really liked the script, but there are very few people I would have made this particular script with except for Chris. That’s a sign of a good director and good editing.
DC: Was the finished film different from how it appeared in the script?
JB: The film surprisingly is very much like I imagined it because I never read the movie – Chris was attached to it, like I said, so the version of this script, that Chris Landon would do, is pretty much exactly the version he wound up doing. He has a very particular voice, as a film maker, which you can see in his prior movies. And I know, I can always recognize Chris in the movies that he’s done and I recognize it throughout this movie. The tone of the movie, the casting of the movie, you know he just kind of funny and a little bit left of center, and a little sick. You can see that all the way through the movie.
DC: It’s quite a bit different from Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse, wouldn’t you agree?
JB: You could see a lot of studio pushed agenda in Scouts, at least I could – what was from the studio and what was from Chris. And we give our film makers a lot more latitude, we don’t – we give a lot of thoughts to the film makers from the beginning to the end of the process but we don’t make them do anything so like the best idea wins… So the movies are more pure. Whether you like them or not they’re certainly more pure to the writer, director vision, than a typical Hollywood movie.
DC: Was there ever any discussion to push it more, to make it a Rated R film?
JB: We always set out to make a PG13 movie, we talked about that from when we started. We have a long relationship with the MPAA and we really know what they – you never know for sure until they watch the movie and rate the movie – but I have a very good idea of what they will and won’t do. And if they you a rating you don’t want, the give you an opportunity to re-cut it until it gets to a point where they’re comfortable giving the rating that you do want, should you choose to do that. So I had a film maker who wanted the same thing we wanted, a PG13 rating, so it wasn’t too tricky to do.
DC: What’s your favorite death scene?
JB: I like the hanging death. I think that’s my favourite.
DC: Masked killers in horror films are always a bit tricky. Why a baby?
JB: Chris was about to become a father when we were making this movie and I think he had his worst nightmare of what his baby would be and that’s what the baby face killer is! Chris designed it. We talked about it a little bit, but Chris designed it. He had a pretty clear notion of what it would be. When I first saw it, I thought, that thing is scary, so it worked. Have you been to Blum House of Horrors? They’re a bunch of people running around, so they’re very haunting.
DC: Happy Death Day seems to be a good set up for a sequel. Have you thought about that yet?
JB: We haven’t thought about a sequel, but if the movie’s a big success, I would love to make a sequel. I would really love it if Chris wanted to do it and I can think of a lot of sequels for the movie. But I’m really am reluctant to make sequels unless our film makers, the original film makers, want to do them. Almost every sequel we’ve ever done, has been done by the person who directed the first movie, which is very unusual, especially for horror, very unusual, and so I kind of leave it to them.
DC: What’s the collaboration like between Blumhouse and Universal Studio’s Halloween Horror Nights?
JB: It’s very comfortable. John Murty is the filmmaker of mazes, right, he just has total control of the mazes. He operates kind of like we do, he listens and he’s very collaborative and I really trust him with our properties to do something cool and I think this year he out did himself, he did something really great, I’m really happy with what he did. We have a few mazes this year. There’s Insidious, as a stand-alone thing, which is our movie and there’s Blum House of Horrors which is The Purge, Happy Death Day and Sinister. So we actually have two different mazes and I like them both.
Happy Death Day is directed by Christopher Landon, who co-wrote the film with Scott Lobdell. Jessica Rothe headlines the film, which comes out Friday, October 13th.
Synopsis:
A college student (Jessica Rothe, La La Land) relives the day of her murder with both its unexceptional details and terrifying end until she discovers her killer’s identity.
Categorized:News
