Boy, oh boy, Blumhouse Productions founder Jason Blum found himself in the middle of the social media outrage machine yesterday. After an interview was published, which featured the producer opine about why Blumhouse hasn’t had much success hiring female filmmakers, chalking it up to a lack of female directors, people were obviously upset. So, today, Blum took to Twitter to apologize.
“Thank you everyone for calling me out on my dumb comments in that interview. I made a stupid mistake. I spoke too quickly about a serious issue—an issue I am passionate about,” he tweeted.
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He continued, “Over 50 percent of our audience is female. Over 50 percent of Blumhouse execs are women. Some of our most successful franchises are anchored by women…But we have not done a good enough job working with female directors and it is not because they don’t exist.”
As pointed out in our report yesterday, Blum did list a number of female directors that passed on his projects, but said the main cause of the lack of female filmmakers was “there are not a lot of female directors period, and even less who are inclined to do horror.” What followed was an onslaught of people on social media giving names of female directors that haven’t been given the same high-profile gigs that Blumhouse offers.
Also of note, and something that wasn’t brought up in the interview, is how Blum said that the female directors he approaches are being offered existing projects, such as the Sony film “Fantasy Island.” From what we’ve seen in their careers, filmmakers like Lynne Ramsay and Jennifer Kent aren’t likely choices to take on existing IP, let alone something based on what is seen as a fairly silly TV series from the ‘70s. Perhaps, Kent, Ramsay, Kusama and others would be more inclined to develop new projects, a la Jordan Peele and “Get Out,” if offered?
Either way, Blum is sorry and he ended his statement by saying, “I will do better.” We’ll see what that means in the coming months.
https://twitter.com/jason_blum/status/1052785703145287681
