Inside BlumHouse
there is a severed leg sticking out of a mound of chopped-up logs in Jason Blum’s office. Sat at the other end of the room, on a sofa facing Empire, Blum slowly stirs some tea. In the wake of Catherine Keener’s hypnosis tactics in Get Out, it’s a little ominous. “Oh, I know,” he grins. “Be careful, buddy. I might be getting you ready for the Coagula.”
The Coagula, Get Out’s procedure in which black people are body-snatched, becoming involuntary hosts for the minds of physically ailing white people, is — when you read it like that — not traditional awards-season material. But Blumhouse has been upending expectations and subverting norms from the start, and the last year has been a banner one for the company. Its two biggest successes yet have forged new genre ground, defying traditional categorisation while setting the box office on fire, with Jordan Peele’s Get Out taking in $255 million worldwide from a $4.5 million budget (while scoring a Best Picture Oscar nomination and winning Best Original Screenplay), and M. Night Shyamalan’s multiple personalities thrill-ride Split, made for $9 million, taking $278 million.
This story is from the April 2018 edition of Empire Australasia.
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This story is from the April 2018 edition of Empire Australasia.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
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