You’ve likely seen Blumhouse’s logo in front of horror films like Halloween and Get Out, and now you’re going to see that blue-tinged dirty wall at the start of some horror games. The film production company is launching Blumhouse Games, a division that will fund, publish, and produce horror games primarily by indie devs. The company say they’re looking for “original” content, so don’t expect any M3GAN spin-offs for a while.
Blumhouse Games are targeting indie releases for console, PC, and mobile, as long as they can keep the budget under $10 million. Blumhouse’s winning box office strategy has been to produce relatively cheap horror films that get a large return on investment, but horror games can be a little less accessible than their film counterparts - dark corridors tend to be scarier when you’re walking through them yourself - so, we’ll see if the same tactics work for games, too.
The new division will be led by Zach Wood, who was previously a producer on Arkane’s Redfall, among others. He’s joined by CFO Don Sechler, a former member of PlayStation’s third-party relationship team. Blumhouse’s pivot isn’t an unprecedented move since Annapurna Interactive is also a subsidiary of a film studio, and that initiative has given us gems like Outer Wilds and Donut County. It’ll likely be a few years before we see any game releases from Blumhouse as the studio haven’t announced anything so far.
I was only joking about a M3GAN spin-off, but the android killer romp was surprisingly really, really funny. And camp. And creepy. Just go see M3GAN if you like killer dolls and laughing at stupid stuff, it should still be in cinemas.
Read more on rockpapershotgun.com