Blumhouse Productions’ Jason Blum On Why Academy Ignores Horror Genre

No doubt about it, the Academy doesn’t really like to acknowledge genre films. In 2004, it made history when The Return of the King swept the ceremony, bringing home 11 Oscars. Some thought that may open the floodgates to more genre films, but that never happened. The Dark Knight was snubbed for Best Picture, and very few genre pictures make its way to the Oscars, outside of technical achievements.

However, one genre that is particularly ignored is horror. Get Out was one of this year’s runaway hits, and we wouldn’t be surprised if it isn’t nominated for a single award. But why is that?

Screen Rant asked that very question of Jason Blum, founder of Blumhouse Productions (producer of such films as Get OutSplit, and The Purge), who has made a pretty penny off of strong, low budget horror flicks. Here’s what he had to say:

“You know what, I don’t know because I was going to say because people tend to shy away from the violence, but the truth is there are super violent movies that are nominated for Academy Awards, they’re just rarely horror films or they haven’t been horror films in a long time. Maybe they think they’re gross or something. I don’t know, that’s a good question. I don’t know. But you’re right.”

Sadly, I don’t think it’s just a matter of violence. As he mentioned, some of their big films are violent. As the landscape of film has changed, it’s become very clear that there are age-old prejudices that never die, and among those is the stink of “genre.”

No way some silly horror film can possibly be good enough to warrant an actual award, right? At least that’s my personal perspective. In a world where film snobs can boo at the Netflix logo in an Okja screening, I can also see the old prejudices living on in pretentious circles.

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SOURCE: Screen Rant

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