Blumhouse, the production company known for its Paranormal Activity franchise, is turning toward the gaming industry. The company has taken on Zach Wood, a veteran video game producer, as president. Wood has 25 years of developing experience working for Arkane Studios and Sony. Don Sechler, ex-PlayStation Executive will be named as Chief Financial Officer. Prior to joining Blumhouse Sechler headed the operations, finance, and strategy for Sony PlayStation developer and publisher relations. Blumhouse Games will be partnering with Indie developers to bring horror-themed games to business.
President of Blumhouse, Abhijay Prakash, stated “We’re in the scary story business. We do films, we do TV and there is this massive, growing segment in media and entertainment called gaming.” A statement released by Blumhouse states that the company will look toward titles with budgets lower than $10 million to push creative boundaries.
“Through my time in the industry, I’ve had the good fortune of working closely with developers to bring their ideas to life,” Wood said. “There’s a unique opportunity for horror and genre in the indie game space, and I’m thrilled about teaming up with Blumhouse to meaningfully leverage the company’s brand, reputation, and creative talent.”
“When we sat with Zach and Don they articulated an approach that resonated with Blumhouse’s model and we knew it was a perfect place for us to start our push into the interactive space,” Prakash said. “With their experience, sensibility and knowledge of the gaming marketplace Zach and Don are the ideal leaders to leverage Blumhouse’s unique genre strengths into gaming.”
Blumhouse Productions, founded in 2000, has created many movies like Paranormal Activity, Insidious, The Purge, etc. They are currently in the works of producing an original video game, Five Nights at Freddy’s by Scott Cawthorne, into movie. Blumhouse is also producing an upcoming movie called Spawn, featuring Jamie Foxx, that has many video game adaptations by Image Comics. Blumhouse is planning to merge with James Wan’s Atomic Monster which is expected to close around the summer. Both Blumhouse and Atomic Monster had worked together on the recent thriller movie, M3GAN.