Dee Rees Developing Horror Film With Get Out Producer Jason Blum

Get Out producer Jason Blum recently revealed to the New York Times that he is working with director Dee Rees on a horror movie about two Black lesbians dealing with paranormal energy in rural America. Blum has produced numerous successful horror features including The Purge and Paranormal Activity films. He met with Rees after their initial introduction at a Sundance Institute supporters meeting and they discussed her idea over lunch. She told him about the strange encounters she had with her wife in their small town American home and used that as the basis of her movie pitch.

“You’ve got me and my wife, two Black lesbians, and when we first moved in, we fought every day over all these little things: ‘Why is this over there? Did you move that?’ Maybe it was a ghost or maybe it was some other force like us not wanting to be there or fitting in.”

Three weeks later Rees remarked, “I can’t tell you how rare it is that people mean what they say in this business, he’s just letting me make the best possible version of what I want to make.” Rees’s Mudbound debuted at the Sundance Film Festival this year and was purchased by Netflix with plans to have the film simultaneously in the theaters and on their platform. Mudbound, based on the novel by Hilary Jordan, is the follow-up to Rees’s Emmy-winning Bessie.