The Blumhouse TV Playbook in 2026, Straight From the President
Abhijay Prakash on ‘The Rainmaker,’ ‘Scarpetta’ and optimism with tight budgets: ‘What Disney is to family, we want to be for fear’
I cover TV and host Ankler Agenda. I scooped UTA’s move to drop intimacy coordinator clients, wrote about film schools scrambling to address industry disruption and reported on agents’ concerns about a Netflix-Warner Bros. deal. Email me at elaine@theankler.com
I’m kicking off this year with some optimism for TV with a chat with Blumhouse president Abhijay Prakash, previously president of Universal Filmed Entertainment Group and COO of DreamWorks Animation and Focus Features. (Jason Blum’s Blumhouse and James Wan’s Atomic Monster completed their merger two years ago but maintain separate executive teams — with Atomic Monster pres Michael Clear rolling up to CEO Wan — and distinct, though closely aligned, brands.)
What interested me about Blumhouse’s growing focus on TV was twofold: a. They have so much success in theatrical, and the TV market can feel pretty mid right now, so why?; and b. Can a company obsessed with low budgets make shows that feel premium?
Blumhouse and Atomic Monster of course are best known for horror at the movie theater, from Paranormal Activity to The Conjuring to Get Out. Together they crossed $1 billion at the box office in 2025. But developing and creating a successful television business is alternately a “Sisyphean task” and a “hamster wheel,” says Prakash, who joined Blumhouse in 2022. “You really are rolling a ball up a hill constantly.”
“A lot of people have kind of a ‘sky is falling’ attitude about TV — ‘It’s so hard and nobody’s working,’” Prakash tells me. “We don’t have that. We believe in the things that we’ve got in development, and we believe in what the audience is after. … What’s happening with Stranger Things right now is phenomenal — not our show, obviously, but in the genre in which we play. That gives us confidence that people want to have dark, thrilling, scary stories.” Another source of confidence for the company is continuing belief — and rewards — for its way of doing business, as its CFO Josh Small told Ashley Cullins last month. “Giving creative freedom with less money upfront — but substantial upside in success — is simply a better model,” says Small. “It’s lower-risk, higher-reward and aligns incentives for everyone to do their best work together.”
Currently, Blumhouse-Atomic Monster has several series in development and three ordered series, including Blumhouse crime thriller Scarpetta, adapted for Prime Video from Patricia Cornwell’s novels and starring Jamie Lee Curtis and Nicole Kidman, (premiering March 11), Atomic Monster’s upcoming 56 Days starring Dove Cameron (also on Prime, Feb. 18), and Peacock’s recently released Simu Liu starrer The Copenhagen Test from Atomic Monster. (Kevin Bacon’s The Bondsman from Blumhouse was canceled last year after one season.)
While the teams will generate limited series and anthologies, “the overarching thing is ongoing series,” Prakash told me by Zoom on Friday.
Here’s what else paid subscribers can learn from my conversation with Prakash:
Which buyers are still saying yes to new scripted series, and what they now demand in exchange
The financial architecture behind The Rainmaker, and how a Lionsgate partnership helped USA pull off a rare scripted comeback
Why Blumhouse and Atomic Monster operate as two distinct labels — and how that structure gives them more shots on goal in a risk-averse TV market
How Prakash applies “Blumhouse orthodoxy” — tight budgets, shared upside, creative autonomy — to the unforgiving economics of television
How horror and crime TV are evolving to meet audience expectations for long-form storytelling — and why “dark” doesn’t mean exhausting
Where unscripted fits into the Blumhouse TV strategy, and why speed and volume matter more than prestige in that lane
Three creative principles that quietly unify Atomic Monster and Blumhouse across film and television