Jason Blum and James Wan Open Produced By Conference Comparing the Low-Budget Horror Boom to ‘Edgy Movies’ With a ’70s Vibe

Producers Jason Blum and James Wan opened the Produced By conference on Saturday with a declaration that the film business is strongly rebounding from the post-COVID doldrums. The pair spoke with enthusiasm as their Blumhouse-Atomic Monster studio is riding high on the success of two buzzy box office hits — Focus Features’ “Obsession” and A24’s “Backrooms.”

“To me there’s almost this feeling of the ’70s of like this new generation of young people who are making edgy movies that are connecting in theaters in a crazy way,” Blum said in the opening session of Produced By, hosted by the Producers Guild of America on the Universal Studios lot.

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“So many young people who didn’t grow up in a time when you couldn’t go to the movies and they haven’t had something for them to get off their iPad and go see the movie. Suddenly they have two movies,” Blum said. ” ‘Obsession’ this weekend went up 20% from last weekend. Last weekend it went up 30%.”

Wan declared flatly that “the horror genre keeps saving our industry” in the discussion moderated by PGA president Stephanie Allain.

Blum asserted that “Obsession,” made on a budget of $750,000, is now the highest-grossing film released domestically by Universal’s Focus Features specialty label.

Blum and Wan cited the excitement around new talent emerging from the grassrootes of social media and YouTube, such as “Obsession” helmer Curry Barker and “Backrooms” director Kane Parsons. Blum pointed out the perhaps not unexpected irony of creatives raised on small screens yearning to see their work on the biggest of stages.

“There’s f—–g hope in the movie business, and it’s exciting, and it’s great. The generation of people, like everyone’s on Instagram, and everyone’s on social media — the stars of the internet, they want to make movies, and that’s great, great for all of us,” Blum said.

Wan put a fine point on it. “They want to make movies for the big screen,” Wan said. “They join on the internet on platforms like TikTok and YouTube, but in the end of the day, they’re storytellers. They want to make things for the big screen. This young generation, Gen Z, they really do want to go back to the theaters.”

Blum added, “And they’re making something we haven’t seen before,” citing “Backrooms,” which builds on the horror found in liminal spaces. “It’s the greatest, but the strangest movie ever, and the idea that it may be the biggest original horror opening of all time, is really, really great for everybody in this room.”

Wan offered a little more backstory on how “Backrooms” came together earlier this decade when Wan reached out to Parsons who was 16 at the time.

“You just come across things that, as a filmmaker, you look at something and you go, There’s a seed of something really cool about this, even if it’s not viral, but if there’s something special about it, you go, I think the creator of this particular content has what it takes,” Wan said.

“That was kind of what happened with us at Atomic Monster early on, like four or five years back, when we came across the viral shorts called ‘Backrooms,’ and we’re like, you know what, this is awesome, we should talk to this guy [Parsons]. He was 16 years old, and on our first Zoom with him, his dad needed to be on the Zoom with him. We wanted to make sure we had permission from the father, and we just sort of worked with him. We talked to him. He’s a really smart kid, really brilliant. His maturity is way beyond his years.”

Wan and Atomic Monster weren’t the only ones chasing Parsons. Filmmaker Shawn Levy was also in the hunt. He’s an exec producer on the film, which opened this weekend.

“There were a lot of people going after Kane, and I think Kane was torn, because he really like the two of us, and we just said ‘We’re friends with [Levy’s] 21 Laps. Let’s work together on this.’ And that’s basically what we did.”

Blum noted how much the job of assembling movies has changed in recent years. “One of my favorite things about producing is that the job just always changes. Our job 20 years ago our job today is totally different, but one of the things that I think is the strength of our company is taking the understanding of how to harness the talent of these new generation of creators and turn it into theatrical movies, which is, which is complicated. But that’s our new mission right now.”

(Pictured: Blumhouse-Atomic Monsters’ James Wan and Jason Blum)