Jason Blum has been highly successful in his horror movie-producing career, but he said one Blumhouse film was ruined by “fake news” surrounding its release. There might not be a more successful horror producer today than Jason Blum, who has his name on films like Paranormal Activity, Insidious, The Purge, and the Halloween reboot.

However, not all Blumhouse movies have been successful, and according to Jason Blum, at least one of them was not the fault of the film but of people making up stories about it before ever seeing it. This movie was The Hunt, starring Betty Gilpin, about the elite in society hunting down and killing the “deplorables” at a country manor.

The Hunt Is One Of Two Blumhouse Flops Jason Blum Thinks About Every Day

In a recent interview with Variety, Jason Blum said he thinks about two failures every day. Those two movies are Jem and the Holograms and The Hunt, which he feels should both have been hits. For Jem and the Holograms, Blum said Jon M. Chu did everything right, but the movie didn’t work. However, his thoughts on The Hunt are different.

“The Hunt” got everything right, but fake news killed the movie. It broke my heart, because there was a false narrative that got attached to the movie that destroyed it. It was too bad, and it would’ve been a huge hit and have been great for the culture.”

This isn’t the first time Blum has said this about The Hunt; he previously blamed fake news for the film’s initial failure. Blum believes The Hunt shows the biggest regret he has about running Blumhouse, because these are things out of his control. Blum said people made up rumors about the movie before anyone saw it.

These rumors came from the trailers, when no one knew what the movie was about, so they just made up stories to ruin it. Blum said his biggest regret in Blumhouse was that no one got to see The Hunt because of the controversy. He went on to say he hoped it wouldn’t happen again, but knew it was possible.

Why The Hunt’s Controversy Worked Against It

The biggest problem was that everyone was blasting the movie without having seen it, and the complaints were oddly aligned from both sides. Conservatives said the film showed Donald Trump supporters being hunted down by liberals. Liberals said the movie was showing Trump supporters hunting them down.

Because both sides were so dug in to their preconceived beliefs, no one wanted to see the film and wouldn’t listen to anyone explain what the movie was really about. Jason Blum said no one who talked about The Hunt on the news had seen the film or read the script, and just made things up to get views.

The Hunt cost $14 million to make, and for a horror movie of this type, it should have easily recouped the money. Instead, it ended up grossing only $12.4 million worldwide and $5.8 million domestically. Interestingly, it received a 57% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes and 66% from the audience, yet it still flopped.

However, it is also important to note that the box-office failure might have been caused initially by fake news, but the pandemic also damaged its run. Thanks to the closure of almost all theaters, The Hunt played almost exclusively at drive-in theaters. The weekend of its release was the lowest box office total since October 1998.

The Biggest Problem With The Hunt Was Not Being Very Good

The truth is, The Hunt was going to flop no matter what, thanks to the pandemic and the difficulties of getting out to see it when it was released in theaters. However, the bigger problem is that The Hunt wasn’t as deep and important as Jason Blum seemed to believe when he released it.

In the end, the film is just a retelling of a story that has been told before. It is very similar to the classic movie, The Most Dangerous Game, which also saw master hunters hunting down people after a shipwreck for their own amusement. This is a highly regarded classic and even has a Criterion Collection release.

It was also retold in a similar story in the 1994 action-thriller Surviving the Game, which starred Rutger Hauer and a group of wealthy elites who pay the homeless to become their latest hunting prey. Ice-T stars as the homeless man they abduct and send out with the intention of hunting down and killing.

The truth is that The Hunt is not an original story. However, there might have been a desire to release it for a new generation of moviegoers unfamiliar with The Most Dangerous Game or the more B-grade Surviving the Game. It also deserves credit for adding some dark humor not seen in the earlier movies.

Betty Gilpin was great in her role as the Final Girl in the movie, as she took the fight back to the elite who felt the poor and downtrodden were no better than their toys to play with. The film also deserves credit for taking internet conspiracies and having the elitists simply wanting to kill people who offended them online.

There was enough here to make The Hunt stand out, but sadly, the world worked against it. Between a lack of true depth, fake news from people who choose to mislead the public rather than educate them, and a real-life pandemic, the film failed. However, this leaves Jason Blum always wondering what could have been.

Sources: Variety, The-Numbers, Rotten Tomatoes