Phantom Films joins hands with Blumhouse Productions and Ivanhoe Pictures to produce horror films

Madhu Mantena

Anurag Kashyap, Vikas Bahl, Vikramaditya Motwane and Madhu Mantena, co-founders of Phantom Films, have joined hands with Hollywood’s Blumhouse Productions, which has produced The Purge, Paranormal Activity, Insidious and Sinister franchises and Ivanhoe Pictures the recently-launched Asian-focused film and television production company for a multi-year partnership to produce local language horror movies all over India. The deal calls for the production of a minimum of 10 films over five years.
While Ivanhoe will finance the films, Phantom will produce projects that will be released in India under the Blumhouse brand.
“Horror is a genre that hasn’t been exploited correctly in India. There are a lot of horror fans in this country who don’t get Indian films. And we are collaborating with some of the best people in the world,” said Mantena.
While the hunt is on to get new directors on board to helm these films, according to Mantena, Kashyap may direct a film and Motwane also, if he finds a story to tell.
“Right now we have not thought of any director but basically what we are looking out for is material and film-makers and we hope to start the first film in the first quarter of next year. For local language, we may dub the hindi version into other languages like Tamil and Telugu or simultaneously produce in other languages,” he said.
As for the ceiling on the budget, it would be around Rs.5-6 crores, (a million dollars each). “Around the world, horror films are made at relatively low budgets and they shoot faster and a million dollars is a good budget for a horror film. As for profit sharing, it’s like any other co-production between companies,” said the producer whose company Phantom Films has made films like Lootera, Hasee Toh Phasee and Queen and have a slate of films like Ugly, Bombay Velvet, NH10 and Ghoomketu  lined up.