Blumhouse’s Jason Blum was ‘in pain all weekend’ as ‘M3GAN 2.0’ bombed

Is Blumhouse, the little horror shop that became a multi-billion dollar hitmaker, entering its first flop era? Founder Jason Blum has some thoughts.

“I’ve been in pain all weekend long, and I’ve been thinking about all this stuff way too much,” Blum said on Tuesday’s episode of The Town. Blum asked host Matthew Belloni to reserve a spot for him on the first episode back from the weekend that saw M3GAN 2.0, the highly-anticipated sequel to 2023’s cash cow M3GAN, majorly fail to meet expectations – the third film this year to do so, after Wolf Man and The Woman in the Yard. “I thought, ‘You know what? If Blumhouse is in a slump, I’d like to tell that story. I don’t want other people to tell that story,'” he said.

Blum has historically been candid with his reactions to how his studio’s products are faring in the marketplace. He’s even been accused of being too candid, as when he posted then deleted a reaction to Wolf Man‘s disappointing opening salvo at the box office. But that didn’t stop him from laying out a detailed, three-point theory on why M3GAN 2.0 was initially “batting around [a] $45 million” opening in projections, but ended up grossing only $10.2 million.

The reasons for M3GAN 2.0‘s underperformance are not eminently clear, as it re-teamed the core cast and creative crew of director Gerard Johnstone, writer Akela Cooper, and star Allison Williams, and enjoyed a prolonged publicity blitz.

In hindsight, however, Blum believes the first problem with the sequel was that “we all thought M3GAN was like Superman. We could do anything to her. We could change genres. We could put her in the summer. We could make her look different. We could turn her from a bad guy into a good guy. And we kind of classically over thought how powerful people’s engagement was really with her.” In particular, Blum believes the “genre swap” from horror laced with camp humor to an action-comedy laced with horror laid the foundation for the flop.

Second, “we thought she could live in the summer.” Meaning, M3GAN 2.0 was originally slated for a January release, like the first film, but was moved to the lucrative summer season because “we’re going from a little horror movie to a tent pole.” Premiering against Brad Pitt’s F1: The Movie, which raced its way to a stunning $144 million global open was perhaps not the best move.

Finally, “When you genre switch, your execution has to be A+,” Blum theorized. Though he called Johnstone “a terrific director… who couldn’t solve almost anything you throw at him,” Blum noted that the New Zealander “needs time,” which he did not have on M3GAN 2.0. “On this, again, we got over our skis too far – summer movie, change the genre, set the date. You know, and we got too excited. We got too excited by M3GAN, and you know, she didn’t work. So that’s what happened.”

Blumhouse has had one hit this year, or at least a film that’s earned back its characteristically modest budget. Drop, the Meghann Fahy-starring thriller which earned $28.6 million over its estimated $11 million budget. But that’s hardly a hit at the scale of Blumhouse’s last big winner, Five Nights at Freddy’s, which grossed nearly $300 million at the global box office over its estimated $20 million budget.

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Though M3GAN 2.0 powered down at the box office, it still won positive notices from critics, including at Entertainment Weekly, where it was praised for having “a lot more creativity here than in typical mid-budget Hollywood fare.” Johnstone is also already thinking up threequel ideas, including “M3GAN 3000,” which he described to EW in a December interview as “M3GAN in a Mad Max universe. I would absolutely line up to see that.”

You can listen to Blum’s full interview on The Town podcast above.