Blumhouse, the production studio behind legendary films like Get Out, M3GAN, and Tooth Fairy starring Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson (opens in new tab), is getting into videogames. The company’s new division, Blumhouse Games, will “partner with independent game developers to bring their creative vision to life via original, horror-themed games” (via VG247 (opens in new tab)).
The new games division will focus on “indie budget” titles, which translates to games with a budget under $10 million, in keeping with the “spirit of its film business”. The company has named Zach Wood—who has games like Hohokum, Twisted Metal, and Prey: Mooncrash under his belt—as president, and ex-Sony finance and operations executive Don Sechler as CFO.
Everyone involved has put out statements saying they’re various flavours of “thrilled” and “excited” to be part of the new division, which I’ll spare you. But it is interesting how much the people involved are emphasising the horror theme of their upcoming gaming projects. Alongside Blumhouse’s statement about “original, horror-themed games” I mentioned earlier, Wood mentioned the “unique opportunity for horror and genre in the indie game space” in his own statement. To its credit, Blumhouse seems to have a pretty clear idea of what it wants to do with its new division.
Blumhouse said it’ll focus on “original” games, but that doesn’t mean its own stable of horror properties is off-limits. After all, the studio has made a staggering number of scary films of varying quality over the years. Dare I hope for a videogame version of The Purge? Will the studio perform the obvious slamdunk of putting Oculus (opens in new tab) on the Oculus Rift? Will John Carpenter somehow manage to wangle another paycheque (opens in new tab) from this? We’ll just have to wait and see.
www.pcgamer.com
