Ethan Hawke stars in Blumhouse and Universal’s “The Black Phone.”
Universal
The world of video games is about to get scary.
Blumhouse, the horror film and TV production company, said on Tuesday that it is launching Blumhouse Games.
“For some time we have been looking to build a team to start accessing the growth opportunities in interactive media,” said Abhijay Prakash, president of Blumhouse. “When we sat down with Zach and Don they articulated an approach that resonated with the Blumhouse model and we knew it was the perfect place for us to start our push into the interactive space.”
Blumhouse Games will partner with independent game developers and target indie-budget games under $10 million. This is a similar strategy to how the company handles the production of filmed content. Blumhouse usually operates on a small production budget and then makes a big profit at the box office.
The company has revolutionized the horror genre in the last decade, turning small-budget films into huge box-office hits. The studio is responsible for the profitable and popular “Paranormal Activity” as well as the Academy Award-winning “Get Out.”
“Paranormal Activity,” released in 2009, had a budget of just $15,000 and grossed more than $107 million in the U.S. and nearly $200 million worldwide.
The company plans to invest in horror-themed games for consoles, PCs and mobile devices.
To lead Blumhouse Games, the company tapped video game industry veteran Zach Woods as group president and Don Sechler as chief financial officer.
Wood has been a video game producer for over 25 years and has published games on every platform including Game Boy, Playstation and Xbox. He has worked on indie projects like “Sound Shapes” and “Hohokum” as well as larger projects like “Prey: Mooncrash” and “Redfall” for Arkane and Bethesda.
Sechler, who will head the finance department, previously worked at Sony and helped reform PlayStation’s relationship with third-party game creators.
Blumhouse is also working to team up with “The Conjuring” director Atomic Monster production company James Wan. The deal is expected to close this summer.
disclosure: Comcast is the parent company of NBCUniversal and CNBC. NBCUniversal has a distribution deal with Blumhouse.