Jason Blum has seen more horror cycles than most people have seen horror movies. As the founder of Blumhouse Productions, the Fear Factory boss has built an empire on low-budget scares that pay off big. But after a rough year of box office misses and increased competition from high-priced auteur horror films like the 2025 movie releases, Weapons and Sinners, the veteran producer is once again confronting an old question: Are there too many upcoming horror movies? His answer, like most things Blum says, was blunt, but still, I didn’t expect this response.
In a new Variety profile celebrating Blumhouse’s 15th anniversary, the producer admitted that, yes, horror may have reached a boiling point this year, but insisted that the industry’s ups and downs are just part of the cycle. On people saying horror is oversaturated, the producer said:
They’re right. This year it was. Everyone pulled back, and next year it won’t be. I’ve been through that cycle now about three times: A few horror movies make money, then everyone makes horror movies and then they don’t make money. Then everyone pulls back, and so it goes. No moderation. Hollywood is like Charlie Sheen.
Now that quote is pure Jason Blum. Little chaotic, but true. He’s describing a Hollywood that can’t help but binge on whatever’s hot until it crashes, but ultimately, much like the actor recently did, it shows back up ready to do it all over again. Horror, more than any other genre, lives and dies by excess.
That excess may have finally caught up with the genre’s reigning king. Blumhouse has weathered a string of critical and box office disappointments, starting in 2024 with Night Swim and Imaginary, and continuing through 2025 with The Wolfman, The Woman in the Yard, Drop, and the underwhelming M3GAN 2.0. Meanwhile, some of the most acclaimed genre releases this year, like Ryan Coogler’s Sinners and Zach Cregger’s Weapons have scored massive wins with higher budgets and arguably riskier creative swings.
To make matters worse, Blum also lost a high-profile bidding war to A24 for the rights to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, admittedly, a painful setback for a producer whose legacy was built on resurrecting fading franchises. Still, the man who redefined modern horror doesn’t seem particularly shaken.
Blum told the outlet that these market swings are inevitable and survivable. He’s seen the genre crash and rebound too many times to panic now. And while this year’s results may look grim, not everything is doom and gloom. His sister company, Atomic Monster, continues to thrive. As the genre’s reigning mogul explained, the formula that continues to work is simple:
Intellectual property and sequels. Something that’s an experiential event. The biggest “Conjuring” movie of all time opened from our sister company, Atomic Monster, a few weeks ago. People are going to the things that they know.
History backs up the scary movie powerhouse here. The post-Paranormal Activity boom led to the Conjuring era, which in turn influenced Get Out and the prestige-horror wave, paving the way for M3GAN and now Sinners. Each cycle burns hot, crashes hard, and rises again. The genre doesn’t die, but regenerates.
Jason Blum isn’t digging a grave for his company just yet. As the horror hitmaker himself put it, the horror genre “is like Charlie Sheen,” and if I were a betting man, my money would be on the horror mogul making one hell of a comeback. That comeback could arrive much sooner rather than later, with The Black Phone 2 and the highly anticipated Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 both on Blumhouse’s upcoming slate.