Jason Blum

Working with kids is always hard because you have to have very limited hours. They have to have breaks, and they have to have a tutor, and they have to have a lot of - good things! But it makes it hard to shoot.

When I was a kid, I really loved game shows. For whatever reason, I was fascinated with them and watched them a ton.

There are movies that we have done that haven't come out very well. That doesn't feel very good. But 'Jem' is in a different category. I'm proud of the movie. I stand by the movie, but I'm obviously sorry it didn't do any better.

Hollywood looks backwards and tries to repeat. And we really try not to do that. We don't always succeed, but I really think that what we try and do is different.

The one thing I try and do, when people say, 'What kind of movies do you guys look for,' the one thing I look for is 'different.' And I think that's very antithetical to Hollywood.

I wouldn't be creatively satisfied if all we did were sequels, but in the same breath, I'll say that I wouldn't be creatively satisfied if everything was an original. It's good to use the different parts of my brain. Very different rules apply.

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.

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.

All of our movies are lower budget, and that makes them more interesting, too: we have to come up with solutions other than throwing money at problems.

When you have less risk, you have more fun. You can take risks. It's much easier to take risks when there's less money on the line.

Anyone who has any kind of success in Hollywood wants to make more expensive movies and spend more money, be bigger. I think it's unusual to have success and want to stay small.

I wish that more people were willing to turn down upfront money in exchange for doing things that are more original. Turning down a seven-figure check has a ripple effect on the budget, which has a ripple effect on the storytelling. The higher the budget gets, the fewer storytelling risks you're able to take.