Jason Blum says there’s still a chance The Hunt could be released

Last Updated on July 30, 2021

The action-thriller THE HUNT made headlines recently after Universal pulled the movie from its release schedule amid the tragic mass shootings in Gilroy, California, El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio, as well as immense backlash from commentators on the political right. But producer Jason Blum still has hope the movie will get a release in theaters while hinting there’s “definitely a chance” it could see the light of day.

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“I learned a lot of lessons. Wouldn’t alter my … If I was offered the choice to make the movie again, I would say yes. We definitely made marketing mistakes, and we made plenty of mistakes along the way, “ Blum said while speaking with Vulture for the release of the new Blumhouse thriller, DON’T LET GO. “So I’ve learned a lot. It might change how I would position movies and how I would consult on the marketing of the movies. But actually the making of the movies? No.”

The premise of the movie – starring Betty Gilpin, Hilary Swank, Emma Roberts, Ike Barinholtz and more – centers on a group of elites who kidnap regular people and make them hunt to the death for sport.  After the recent mass shootings, several conservative pundits trashed the movie as a piece of "liberal propaganda", seeming to take from nothing more than the movie’s trailers that it was playing favorites in the game of politics. Even President Donald Trump went on a Twitter rant about it all.

However, director Craig Zobel broke his silence on the matter with Variety and says that stance is taken wildly out of context, and if anything, the movie pokes fun at all sides of the political spectrum. “Our ambition was to poke at both sides of the aisle equally,” Zobel wrote via email. “We seek to entertain and unify, not enrage and divide. It is up to the viewers to decide what their takeaway will be.”

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“I wanted to make a fun, action thriller that satirized this moment in our culture — where we jump to assume we know someone’s beliefs because of which ‘team’ we think they’re on… and then start shouting at them,” he continued. “This rush to judgment is one of the most relevant problems of our time.”

But, at the end of the day, amid everything that happened, Zobel said he supports the move to take the movie off the schedule, for now.

“I was devastated by going to sleep to El Paso and waking up to Dayton. These types of moments happen far too often. In the wake of these horrific events, we immediately considered what it meant for the timing of our film. Once inaccurate assumptions about the content and intent of the movie began to take hold, I supported the decision to move the film off its release date.”

Currently, there are no known plans for THE HUNT to come out in theaters.