There are a lot of parallels between doing a sequel and doing low budget movies, which is they give creative parameters. As a creative person myself, I work better with parameters as opposed to anything goes.

The scares are the easier part of scary movies. The hard part of scary movies is what leads up to the scares.

The model we established was to give creative people complete creative freedom in exchange for betting on themselves, so they work for the minimums you're allowed to work for, and if the movies work in a big way, everyone does very well. If the movies don't, nobody loses too much money. The benefit to doing all the movies low budget is we can tell different types of stories and take creative risks. The Purge would have been irresponsible to do for $20M, but to do it for $3M makes sense.

My easiest judgment for a script is 'do I want to keep reading it?'

I think the location is almost as important as casting the leads of the movie. The location on The Purge was crucial to that movie working.

Currently there's no other way to get a movie into 3,000 theaters except with a studio. We have a first-look deal with Universal, and it's been fun to work with them. But studios are a part of our life. I think they'll always be, but they'll play a different role. The consumer and the creator are getting closer together.

Horror is great storytelling with scary elements on top of it, but if you don't have great storytelling, you can have all the scares in the world, but the movie won't work.