Jason Blum's biggest regret with running Blumhouse is the controversy surrounding The Hunt. Blumhouse is a production company that showed its success through making low-budget horror films that offer healthy profit margins at the box office, which began with 2007's Paranormal Activity. Other notable successes include The Purge, Insidious, and Split, among many others. Blumhouse even produced award-winning films such as Whiplash, Get Out, and BlacKkKlansman.
The Hunt follows a dozen conservatives who wake up in a field and must fight for survival from a group of liberal elitist Americans who are hunting them for sport. In March 2020, Universal distributed the film. It was originally supposed to be released in September 2019, but it was pushed due to the Dayton and El Paso mass shootings at the beginning of August 2019. Before its delay, the film received a lot of negative coverage from conservative media and former U.S. President Donald Trump's Twitter feed. When the film did finally hit theaters, the COVID-19 pandemic closed all theaters within a week, resulting in poor box office performance.
In an interview with ComicBook.com, Blum spoke about how his biggest regret while running Blumhouse involves The Hunt. While no audiences had even seen the film yet, a lot of misinformation on the movie spread like wildfire. Between the mass shootings and the public backlash, the film was initially pulled off Universal's slate entirely until it was given its March 2020 release date. Blum said that the controversy around the release of The Hunt was so severe, he hopes that it never happens with future projects. See below for Blum's full statement:
The pre-release controversy of The Hunt ruined the whole movie. I mean, it ruined the release of the movie. The Hunt was going to be a big hit movie, and the controversy before the movie destroyed the release of the movie. When I get asked what's my biggest regret running the company, it's that no one got to see The Hunt because of that controversy. That controversy is horrible. It was bad. It was controversy about a movie no one had seen. People were making up stuff about a movie they had not seen, and I really hope it never happens again. I'm worrying about it happening before every movie. If we have controversy before a movie, it can wreck the release...But what can you do? I don't worry too much. I can't control it.
Blum's biggest regret while running Blumhouse has nothing to do with decision-making, but something that was entirely out of his control. The Hunt was tracking to perform fairly well at the box office before the public backlash due to media coverage. The marketing campaign for the March release tried to use the backlash to advertise the movie with poster quotes like "shows Hollywood for what it really is: demented and evil." Unfortunately, the movie did not perform as well as it should have.
The horror genre often touches upon social and political commentary, so the fear of more backlash on future titles certainly exists. The Hunt is not the first film to suffer due to some sort of public outcry concerning the nature of its content. In some cases, it can boost a film's performance to have some backlash, which is how Blumhouse tried to salvage their movie. Blum's frustration about a film's release being wrecked is valid, as this is not the first, and certainly will not be the last film to face such controversy.
Source: ComicBook.com