News
Blumhouse Productions Announces New Book Imprint
At a special event last night at Blumhouse Productions, producer Jason Blum (Paranormal Activity, Sinister, The Purge, Insidious) announced a Halloween treat for genre fans: Blumhouse Books.
The new imprint, a partnership with Doubleday, will launch in July 2015. The first book from the imprint will be called The Blumhouse Book of Nightmares, and will be a collection of short stories by some of the biggest names in genre filmmaking. Among the confirmed contributors are Ethan Hawke, Eli Roth, C. Robert Cargill, Scott Derrickson, Christopher Denham, and James DeMonaco. For the first volume, Blum only put forward the offer to people in the “Blumhouse family.” Strangely enough, James Wan and Leigh Whannell both turned him down.
The genre journalists in attendance last night were treated to a reading of an excerpt by Derrickson and Cargill. Their story, “Clean White Room,” is reminiscent of Saw or Sinister: a man is tied up and tortured, with a hint of something more sinister lurking within.
Blum did not launch Blumhouse Books with the intention of mining the stories for movie ideas. The writers maintain all rights to their stories. For the time being, they are going to stick with genre fiction, but Blum hopes to expand at some point to everything from novelizations of Blumhouse films to graphic novels. He seems to be eyeing a true crime anthology in the next few years, citing true crime books as a favorite genre of his, specifically citing Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood as an inspiration. While only one volume is in the works for now, Blum hopes to eventually build up to two or three volumes per year.
Starting today, fans can submit their own short horror fiction for possible inclusion in the collection. Blum hopes at least one fan story will appear in the print book; if not, at least one will appear in the ebook edition. Hardback, paperback, and ebooks of The Blumhouse Book of Nightmares will all be available upon release.
For more info, or to submit your own story, visit blumhousebooks.com.
In the grim darkness of the far future there is only war, but it was a cheerful illustrator from England who helped to define the terrifying war-torn imagery that inspired what we now know as Grimdark (a hybrid genre combining horror with sci-fi/fantasy).
Unfortunately for fans of Warhammer 40,000, Trench Crusade and countless other sources of Grimdark thrills, veteran artist John Blanche passed away this week after struggling with health issues for the past few years.
While the artist retired back in 2023, he leaves us with an enormous legacy of iconic artwork that continues to inspire gamers and storytellers around the world to this very day.
The news is especially gloomy as it was only last year that Daniel Lowman and Napoleon Dynamite himself Jon Heder released The Grim & the Dark: The Search for John Blanche, a documentary following Heder’s exploration of the Grimdark genre culminating in a heartwarming encounter with Blanche in his own home.
Below is one of my favorite pieces by Blanche, his highly influential depiction of Warhammer 40k’s God-Emperor of Mankind on his Golden Throne.
We send our deepest condolences to John Blanche’s family, friends, and fans.
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