Jason Blum

Jason Ferus Blum (/blʌm/; born February 20, 1969) is an American film producer. He is the founder and CEO of the eponymous company Blumhouse Productions, which produced such horror franchises as Paranormal Activity (2007–2015), Insidious (2010–2018), and The Purge (2013–2018). Blum also produced the critically acclaimed and commercially successful films Sinister (2012), Oculus (2013), The Gift (2015), Hush (2016), Split (2016), Ouija: Origin of Evil (2016), Happy Death Day (2017) and its 2019 sequel, Upgrade (2018), Halloween (2018), Us (2019) and The Invisible Man (2020).

Blum received nominations for the Academy Award for Best Picture for producing Whiplash (2014), Get Out (2017), and BlacKkKlansman (2018). He received the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Television Movie for producing the drama film The Normal Heart (2014). He also won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Documentary or Nonfiction Series for the documentary miniseries The Jinx (2015).

Early life

Blum was born in Los Angeles, California, the son of Shirley (née Neilsen) and Irving Blum. His mother was an art professor and his father was an independent art dealer and director of the Ferus Gallery. His father was Jewish. His mother was previously married to museum director Walter Hopps.

Career

Blum worked for Bob and Harvey Weinstein as an executive at Miramax, and later as an independent producer for Paramount Pictures. Prior to his tenure at Miramax, Blum was a producing director at Ethan Hawke's Malaparte theater company. Blum is a 1991 graduate of Vassar College.

He obtained financing for his first film as producer, Kicking and Screaming (1995), after receiving a letter from family acquaintance, entertainer Steve Martin, who endorsed the script. Blum attached the letter to copies of the script he sent around to Hollywood executives.

Blumhouse Productions

In 2000, he founded Blumhouse Productions, which specializes in producing micro-budget movies that give directors full creative control over the projects. Some of the films produced by Blum have been highly profitable, including horror film Paranormal Activity which was made for $15,000 and earned nearly $200 million. NPR's Planet Money did a special podcast about how Blum's production house gets its success.

Blum also produced Insidious (2010), Sinister (2012), The Purge (2013), and Happy Death Day (2017), all of which had successful sequels. In 2014, he served as an executive producer on the television film The Normal Heart, which went on to win the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Television Movie. In 2015, he won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Documentary or Nonfiction Series for HBO's The Jinx. Blum produced the feature films BlacKkKlansman, Whiplash and Get Out, all of which earned him nominations for the Academy Award for Best Picture.

In 2018, Blum said in an interview that the reason no woman had ever directed one of his horror films was that "there are not a lot of female directors (...) and even less who are inclined to do horror." After much criticism on social media, in which lists of such directors were circulated, he apologized for what he called his "dumb comments." In 2019, Sophia Takal directed and co-wrote the studio's horror remake Black Christmas, which opened on December 13, the studio's first released film by a female director.

Personal life

On July 14, 2012, Blum married journalist Lauren A.E. Schuker in Los Angeles.

In July 2019, he bought a Brooklyn Heights townhouse for $9.8 million.

Awards and nominations