Interview: Jason Blum on His New Release The Black Phone

At the helm of Blumhouse Productions sits a fantastical horror mind that has brought to the screen a incredible reel of horror movies—all of them loved by horror movie watchers around the world. Having released a plethora of beloved horror films over the last 12 months including Bingo Hell, Manor, Paranormal Activity: Next of Kin, Halloween Kills, and most recently The Black Phone. Blumhouse Productions stand at the forefront of lifting independent and smaller budget films, showcasing new and rising horror filmmakers, and breathing new life into much loved franchises.

The Black Phone is no exception from the excellence that comes out of Blumhouse. Adapted from Joe Hill’s 20th Century Ghosts short story of the same name, the film is a brilliant demonstration of partnerships between Scott Derrickson, Robert Carghill, and Jason Blum. Set in 1978, small town Denver is terrorised by “The Grabber,” a child abductor (Ethan Hawke). Siblings FInney and Gwendolen Blake lose friends to The Grabber, trying their best to stay safe and out of his reach. Unfortunately, Finney falls victim to The Grabber: trapped in his basement, spending his days working out how to escape with the help of previous victims—and a mysterious black telephone—lost to the evil abductor.

Congratulations on the release of The Black Phone. It was one of my most anticipated films of this year, and honestly, I am obsessed, absolutely obsessed.

Oh, good. I'm so glad! 

Scott Derickson and Robert Kahill came to you with this script. What was it that grabbed you about this script and story?

What grabbed me was a scary movie with Scott Derickson, he's one of the, one of the best directors, especially for this genre, but really for anything he's put his mind to. When Scott made Sinister, I said to myself, if ever has another scary script that he wants to direct. I would do it. I basically said yes before I read the script, I really like the script. 

I think it's one of the rare instances where the movie actually turned out better than the script that rarely happens. Usually the script is the dream and the movie is the reality, which is not as good, but this was actually the reverse. I mean, I thought the script was interesting and the story was interesting. There was nothing about the script that was kind of high concept or overtly commercial, or even overtly kind of Blumhouse, but Scott is Blumhouse. So I said, yes, and I'm glad I did.

As a producer, how involved did you, and do you typically get involved with the filmmaking and writing process?

we're very involved. We give our filmmakers traditionally; final cut. We give them more creative control than they usually get. But that doesn't mean that we don't give him a lot of suggestions along the way, they don't have to take them and Scott is not shy. So he takes what he thinks will make the thing better. And he throws out the rest, which is what I encourage our filmmakers to do. 

But we're very involved. We're involved in the casting. The film was cast by our casting director who works at Blumhouse. All the different executives who work at Blumhouse touch all aspects of the movie, post production, physical production, business affairs, all of that.There's a creative executive on the set every day. And so we're involved in the prep and the, in the actual shooting part, and then very much in the post production, in the cut, in the marketing. So we get very involved, but we try and look at ourselves as turbo charging the director, as opposed to stomping on the director.

 You were saying that you gave Scott a lot of freedom with this [The Black Phone]. How do you support that creative freedom as the producer of the film?

Well, you give them freedom, which means that the conversation, when, as soon as the director (if the director) knows that they don't have to fight for their vision, they're gonna win the argument.

At the end of the day, they're much more open to ideas because they’re not protecting this. They don't have to protect anything. So the dialogue is a lot better. I feel like with our directors, because we say, “we think you should do these 27 things”. And they say, “well, I like these 15 ideas, but these other 12 ideas I'm not doing.”

And there's nothing we can do about it. Even if we want them to do it. Now, if I really want one of our directors to do something, I will get passionate about it. But in the end, I will always ultimately defer to what our directors want to do.

That's fantastic. It's something that I guess we don't see a lot in filmmaking at, 

Not in theatrical, in streaming we see a lot of it, but not in theatrical. 

Speaking of casting, you worked with some pretty fantastic kids on the set of The Black Phone has a lot of mature themes and context. How do you go about ensuring that these actors are understanding what's happening and fully involved?

If anyone kind of wants to do method acting I'm fine if it's other adults, but we don't do that with the kids. So we spend a lot of time with our kids before the movie. Making sure that they're comfortable and the parents are comfortable and everyone's comfortable.

The funny thing people don't the ironic thing about horror movies is our sets are actually really fun. If you go to the set of a comedy, it's like a funeral everyone's so serious. They take themselves so seriously. One of the reasons I love horror movies is those of us who make them, we don't take ourselves so seriously.

So we're, we really have a good time and that translates to our sets and that's the most important thing when we're working with kids and you get great performances from those actors, if they're comfortable. So we work very hard to make the younger actors that we work with comfortable on our sets. 

When I was watching, I noticed there are some really cool nods to Stephen King and no surprise, Joe Hill, Stephen King's son. Were these, you know, planned to embrace this Stephen King factor? Because I just felt like this King magic throughout the whole film.

I did too, really. I think  that was two things, obviously it's Joe, obviously his son  wrote it, but I think Scott was very aware of injecting Stephen King ghost into the feeling of the movie.

There's a real Stephen King feeling under the movie and movies like it. I think Scott was very, I never talked to him about it, but I'm sure he was very conscious of that. And I'm glad that he did.

I'm a huge Stephen King fan, so being able to watch something that isn't Stephen King, but feel like that storytelling magic was just absolutely incredible. You have a new film coming out, They/Them, are you excited for the project?

I'm really excited. John Logan was a great, great partner and he was really fun to work with. And the film I think came out incredibly well. I'm going to the premiere in New York next week. And I'm looking forward to next Wednesday. 

Final question for you, what are some more projects coming out from Blumhouse that you're really excited about?

We have the final Halloween chapter. Halloween ends, which comes out in October, which people really like in Australia. And then we have this great movie we produced with your fellow Countryman, James Wan called Megan, which is a terrific movie. It comes out in the US in January. And I'm very, very excited about that. That's a great one. We have just had this show called The Thing About Pam with Renée Zellweger, which was a true crime scripted series, which did very well.

Thank you so much. It's been an absolute pleasure to talk to you.

You too, it's been great. It was nice to meet you. I'm glad you liked the movie.