In an illuminating recent magazine profile, Fortune explained how Jason Blum, the low-budget horror movie impresario, has made a habit of outsmarting Hollywood. This weekend, he did it again.
In the Fortune piece, Blum told writer Devin Gordon that he was worried about whether The Exorcist: Believer—the biggest and riskiest bet that his Blumhouse Productions had ever made—would succeed. Blum's fears were well-founded (more on that in a moment). But this weekend's No. 1 movie, the relatively low-budget Five Night's at Freddy's, aka FNaF, will give Blum something to boast about as Halloween nears.
With his Exorcist film, Blum had more on the line than the $400 million deal that his partner, Universal Studios, struck to reboot William Friedkin's terrifying 1973 movie. The weight of fans' expectations weighed heavily on Blum, he told Gordon. Then there was the reputation risk: Blumhouse is famous for turning movies made for peanuts into franchises worth hundreds of millions (see: Paranormal Activity, Get Out, M3GAN). As Gordon explained: "This is a Blum bet that could actually go very wrong."
