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Leigh Whannell's January 2025 Wolf Man cost about $25 million and grossed about $36 million globally. The film is not the disaster the numbers suggest. The strategy around it is.
There was a specific mid-budget horror economy that functioned across the 2010s. It does not function anymore. An essay on what was lost.
Leigh Whannell's follow-up to The Invisible Man arrived in January through Blumhouse and Universal. It is a smaller, stranger film than the one the marketing sold, and the smaller film is the better film.
Blumhouse built its reputation on low-budget original horror. Its 2024 slate tells a different story. The pivot is rational and also a loss.