Blumhouse, Ivanhoe strike genre film pact with India's Phantom

Blumhouse Productions, Ivanhoe Pictures and Phantom Films have formed a multi-year partnership to produce local-language genre movies in India. The deal will see the production of at least ten films over five years.

Ivanhoe Pictures, launched in 2013 to pursue opportunities in US and Asian production, will finance the films.

India’s Phantom Films will produce while one of its founders Anurag Kashyap, the acclaimed Indian filmmaker, will direct one of the movies.

Blumhouse will help oversee the creative, bringing its expertise creating horror franchises like Paranormal Activity,The Purge, Insidious and Sinister.

The films will be released in India under the Blumhouse brand. Distribution has yet to be announced.

Ivanhoe Pictures co-founder and CEO John Penotti said he foresaw “many years of productive and thrill-filled collaboration”.

Phantom Films co-founder Madhu Mantena said the partnership was the “first of its kind association in the Indian Sub Continent”. He added: “Look forward to some terrifying films from India.”

Jason Blum, founder and CEO of Blumhouse said the collaboration would “create engaging, terrifying films for the rapidly growing Indian market”.

He added: “We are excited to bring our approach of empowering filmmakers to tell their favorite genre stories to local-language productions.”

The deal was negotiated on behalf of Ivanhoe Pictures by CFO Suraj Gohill, CAA for Blumhouse and CAA KWAN for Phantom.

Phantom Films was formed by directors and producers Vikas Bahl, Anurag Kashyap, Vikramaditya Motwane and Madhu Mantena. They have had three releases - Lootera, Hasee toh Phasee and Queen - and have a slate of releases lined up including Ugly, Bombay Velvet, NH10 and Ghoomketu.