Jordan Peele and Blumhouse's "social thriller" Get Out is one of the most successful debut features ever, and showed that you can use a divisive issue like race to make a smart, entertaining film everyone can connect with. It's also going to open up a lot of doors to other black filmmakers to branch out and get their projects in front of bigger audiences. And the next one joining with Blumhouse to make that happen is Pariah and Mudbound director, Dee Rees.
In New York Times piece written about producer Jason Blum, it was revealed that Blumhouse would be working with Rees on a horror “centered on the domestic lives of black lesbians in rural America.” Rees and Blum met at Sundance where he saw her southern drama, Mudbound, and she took in Get Out. She told him her idea for a low-budget horror with a small cast and tiny budget, the Blumhouse specialty, that would be inspired by her and her wife's experiences when they first moved to a new home in a small town, where it seemed like some outside force didn't want them there. It also made it difficult to connect with their neighbors.
After hearing her idea, Blum was quick to strike a deal. It was a smart move. Rees is an incredible director who is starting to get wider attention for her work. She recently directed HBO's Bessie biopic, and Netflix paid a hefty $12.5M to acquire Mudbound, which probably would have had Oscar aspirations with any other distributor. Maybe it still does. [via TheTrackingBoard]
