Patrick Wilson and Rose Byrne made very good money from both 'Insidious' movies. Word travels fast, so as soon as you have a success and do what you say you're going to do in a contract and pay out that money, we had a lot more established actors come to us and say they want to work with us.
In big movies, interests are not aligned between those above the line and the financier, because above the line gets paid whether the movie works or not. The financier only makes money if the movie works, and that fundamentally sets up a contentious relationship.
When I was a kid, I really loved game shows. For whatever reason, I was fascinated with them and watched them a ton.
I was lucky enough to have made a tonne of mistakes and be kind of frustrated. I was working in the movies for 15 years before I did 'Paranormal Activity,' so I was lucky enough to have that experience. So instead of trying to make, like, 'Godzilla' after 'Paranormal Activity,' I said, 'Let's keep making inexpensive movies.'
People complain about Hollywood movies being similar. That goes right down to the fundamental green light process, because the process involves having to compare it to three other movies.
'The Purge' is really about America's crazy relationship to guns and guns gone wild, essentially, and it kind of laid the groundwork for 'Get Out.'
John Carpenter had a lot to do with putting social messages into genre movies.
When I was working for Miramax, before Sundance, a videotape of 'The Blair Witch Project' - of the full, completed movie - went to a lot of the buyers. And so we all saw it before the festival, and I passed, a bunch of people passed... Then I watched the movie marching toward success, and was reminded by my bosses what a dope I was.
You shoot yourself in the foot when you think, 'We have to get a good scary movie director to do a script by another scary movie writer.'
If you go to business school, and you put a product out there in the world, and it's working, the logic is to keep putting the same product out there. And I think that really bumps up against the creative process - and moviemaking, generally. And I think that our company really pushes against that.
My favorite thing about horror is that it attracts this great group of nuts, of which I include myself in. I was always kind of an oddball. I collected my fingernails, for instance.
I think if you went to a studio and pitched the first 'Insidious,' it never would have gotten made because it was so offbeat.
Success stems from the producer creating the optimal conditions for the filmmaker's own creative process. Not from steering the filmmaker through a one-size-fits-all approach.
I've grown to love it, but I'm not like a lot of other people who were always crazy horror fans like Eli Roth or Quentin Tarantino.
The real scares on CNN, etc. and the scares in a movie, like 'The Purge,' are totally different. One of the ways you can tell when someone, whether it's a film maker or executive or producer, wants to make a scary movie but doesn't understand that distinction is they'll want to recreate too much of what's on TV.
I love scary movies and respect the filmmakers of scary movies, and it's just as hard to make a great scary movie as it is to make a great comedy or drama or anything else.
Our company, it's, uh, really un-sexy. And I think most people get into Hollywood to be showy. We first of all make horror movies, which people turn their noses up at. Second of all, we make cheap movies, and Hollywood's a lot about ego and money and, 'My movie cost $200m!,' you know?
I think being snobby about the kind of storytelling people do, it just irks me. It irks me. And in fact, it's one of the things that drives me to make as many horror movies as I do.
I couldn't stand it. It was what I thought I always wanted. I was there every day in the trenches, and I hated everything about that job. But what I loved - and what I got from 'The Tooth Fairy' - was to see how studio movies were released.
We make a lot of movies that I don't think merit a wide release. We have this label called Tilt, and we have the movies come out on that, and that's fine. But it shocks me when, having done this a few times, when I really believe a movie should get a wide release, and I struggle to get it released. That does surprise me.
