Blumhouse have established a solid reputation as one of Hollywood’s most profitable production companies, with their constant stream of low-budget horror movies always reliable for some solid box office numbers. While they’ve enjoyed plenty of critical acclaim thanks to the likes of Jordan Peele’s Get Out and Us and the recent Halloween reboot, they seem just as happy to churn out a steady stream of sequels that inevitably fall victim to the law of diminishing returns.
The Paranormal Activity, Purge and Insidious franchises have all been solid moneymakers for Blumhouse, but a property that’s proved to be one of their most popular from a critical and commercial perspective are the Happy Death Day movies. The first earned over $125 million on a budget of just $4.8 million and scored a solid 71% on Rotten Tomatoes, and while the sequel didn’t fare quite as well, almost $65 million at the box office against production costs of $9 million and 70% on Rotten Tomatoes isn’t exactly a bad return, either.
Unsurprisingly, Blumhouse are keen to continue milking one of their most acclaimed cash-cows for all that it’s worth, and boss Jason Blum recently admitted that they’re determined to make Happy Death Day 3 a reality, despite the second installment failing to match the success of the first entry.
“There’s nothing concrete, but I’m very determined to make the movie. Somehow, someway, we’re getting that movie made. There are few movies that I’ve done that really fall into disappointing that the audience didn’t connect to them in the way that I thought that they would have or could have. We would’ve already had a third movie if that second movie had worked financially. It worked in every other way but commercially. I just loved the movie, and like I said, I’m going to get a third one made, somehow, someway.”
Star Jessica Rothe has already claimed that she’d still love to be involved in Happy Death Day 3 even it takes 20 years, but you get the feeling that it isn’t going to take quite as long as that to get it made. In fact, with the sheer volume of content that Blumhouse keep churning out on an annual basis, you can imagine that an official announcement isn’t too far away.
