Jason Zinoman

Indies are putting out pretty good horror.

The days of Blumhouse being the maker of cheap horror movies alone has sort of faded a little bit because horror is a reliable box office draw.

Because whether you're a big studio or a small studio, you know that there is this very rabid fan base that everyone has sort of gotten into the game.

Yeah, and this is Jason Blum, who is sort of the man behind Blumhouse, which has produced and distributed a bunch of horror movies this century.

Paranormal Activity, Insidious, a bunch of other stuff.

So here's what we're going to do.

We have a list here of a couple dozen or so horror franchises that the group of us came up with.

And listeners, I just want to say here right at the front, if your favorite franchise isn't on here, I don't know what to say.

The show can only be so long.

These franchises are arranged chronologically, and the goal here is to eventually get to a list of what we consider to be the 10 best horror franchises of all time.

So I think we should start by going through this big list.

We'll give a quick yes or no to each of these franchises.

Some I think are going to move on very quickly because they feel obvious or iconic, and then some we're probably going to chat about a little bit before we make a decision.

And for the sake of this discussion, I'm defining a franchise as a series of related films.

There's one film that results in multiple sequels that have recurring villains or recurring heroes or recurring locations.

Does that sound right to the two of you?

I think that's a terrible definition.

Okay.

All right.

So this podcast is going to be three hours long.