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.
Jason BlumDirectors typically have three choices - you do a studio movie and get a paycheck up front, you do an independent movie, which is for your heart and you don't get paid up front and probably don't make any money on it, but it hopefully goes to Sundance and is more of an art movie, and then you do TV.
Jason BlumWe have creative freedom because of budgets. Ever since I have been doing low budget movies, we've really had creative freedom.
Jason BlumOne thing I am very strict about is that I don't like spending a lot of money on movies because the more money you spend I think the worse that they get.
Jason BlumHorror 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.
Jason BlumFor me it's much more like a little kid rebelling. The minute I was told what to do at any age, I did the opposite. Hopefully I'll do that for the rest of my life. I come from the business side and Mark comes from the creative side, but every time a decision came up about Creep it was two emails, and we agreed. I've not had that ever with someone on the creative or the business side.
Jason Blum