A run of successful horror remakes abruptly ended in 2010, which spelled trouble for Platinum Dunes. Producer Brad Fuller explains what happened next.
For almost a decade, Platinum Dunes was one of the most successful independent production companies in Hollywood. Beginning with The Texas Chainsaw Massacre in 2003, which made over $100 million on a sub-$10m budget, the studio seemed to have hit on a magical formula: make genre movies to a price, attached to classic horror titles.
Texas Chainsaw was therefore followed by a string of other remakes, all based on films from the 70s and 80s: 2005’s The Amityville Horror was followed by The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning in 2006; The Hitcher, Friday The 13th and A Nightmare On Elm Street were all released between 2007 and 2009.
In the financial crisis era, audiences, it seemed, loved gory escapism. But in 2010, something strange happened: Platinum Dunes co-founder Brad Fuller noticed that his phone had stopped ringing.
Three years earlier, the found footage chiller Paranormal Activity had changed the face of 21st century horror. Making $194m on a tiny budget of $200,000, director Oren Peli’s minimalistic shocker put producer Jason Blum – and his production company Blumhouse – on the map. All of a sudden, the Platinum Dunes remakes that once seemed so bankable – if not particularly admired by critics – looked somehow passe.
“We sat idle for two years,” Fuller says now, “and it was really scary. I was concerned that we were done.”
In the wake of Paranormal Activity, Blumhouse Production bankrolled a sting of genre films made on a low budget – many of them were huge hits. And the sums of money involved in their production were so low, even the ones that didn’t land still made money. Paranormal Activity 2, released in 2010, was another huge success, and it seemed that all anyone in Hollywood wanted to talk about was Blumhouse.
And so, that year, Brad Fuller wrote Jason Blum an email, essentially thanking him for wrecking his career.
Back to school
Although it was founded in 2001, Platinum Dune’s roots go right back to the 1980s. Brad Fuller and director Michael Bay both studied filmmaking at the same university, and shared the same commercial sensibility: where other students tended to like arthouse films, Bay and Fuller favoured action comedies like Lethal Weapon and Beverly Hills Cop.
“We would get into fights with our other classmates,” Fuller recalls. “Because Bay and I always loved really commercial films. And so my favourite films in college were Lethal Weapon, Risky Business, Beverly Hills Cop, Braveheart, and probably The Godfather. And everyone else we went to school with was into very esoteric films. I just couldn’t figure out why people would want to see that.”
Years later, when Michael Bay’s career as a director reached its peak with such crowd-pleasers as Bad Boys, The Rock and Armageddon, he began thinking about setting up a production company which specialised in low-budget genre films.
Bay contacted his old friend, Brad Fuller, and together with fellow producer Andrew Form, they set up Platinum Dunes. Based in Santa Monica, its name was taken from a short film Bay and Fuller had made together when they were younger.
“I think that the way it went down is we were presented with the rights to Texas Chainsaw Massacre,” Fuller says. “And Michael, at the time, was in post on Armageddon, and he was at the height. His career could not have been better, and I was lucky enough that he chose me and Andrew Form [co-founder] to run this company. We had made a couple of movies, but we were not the choice that anyone would have made to do this company, and Bay was very generous by giving us that opportunity. ”
When The Texas Chainsaw Massacre was a hit in 2003, the chance to remake other horror titles soon emerged. For each, the approach remained the same: keep the budgets to around $20m or less, and for Fuller, be a constant presence on set to ensure things are kept on track.
The latter habit was, Fuller says now, at the insistence of Michael Bay. “He said to me, ‘You’re not allowed to leave the set, and anything that goes wrong is on you, so you better be there so that if I see something I don’t like, you can tell me why it happened.’ So that’s kind of how I was raised as a producer, and I can’t break that habit.”
Similarly, the company’s approach to budgets – with films made around the $10-20m range – was based on Bay’s philosophy. Recalls Fuller, “‘What he said is, ‘I want you to try and make movies that can get back their production budget on their opening weekend.’”
Behind the times
By 2007, Platinum Dunes had released four movies – all of them remakes. But while, from the outside looking in, the company appeared to have a strategy in mind, Fuller insists that there wasn’t a master plan for cornering the horror market with recognisable titles.
“When Texas Chainsaw worked, suddenly people seemed to believe that we had the secret sauce,” Fuller says. “I don’t think we did, but as soon as Texas Chainsaw came out, they [MGM] presented us with Amityville. And as soon as Amityville worked, they [New Line Cinema] presented us with Friday The 13th, and then we said, ‘We want Nightmare on Elm Street.’
“So of those first films that we made, four of them, thankfully, were all successful at the box office, and it launched our company. But […] it was not by design. I just felt like I was lucky to be making another movie.”
The run of success came to an abrupt halt in 2010, Fuller recalls, when the offers stopped coming in. Paranormal Activity and its sequel had appeared, and for Platinum Dunes, “the remake thing had stopped working.”
“Horror had changed, and we hadn’t changed with it,” Fuller says. “We sat idle for two years, and it was really scary. I was concerned that we were done. I mean, I really felt like, ‘This is over.’”
It was then that Fuller decided to write an email to Jason Blum, whose production company had suddenly eclipsed Platinum Dunes.
“The email was very simple,” Fuller recalls. “It said, ‘You’ve stolen my career. The least you can do is buy me a cup of coffee.’”
To Fuller’s surprise, Blum wrote back almost straight away. The pair met the following day, and over coffee, Blum mentioned that he was about to work on a horror movie called Insidious. But he also had another script, The Purge, that he was impressed by. Did Fuller want to co-produce it with him?
The Purge therefore became a co-production between Platinum Dunes and Blumhouse. Written and directed by James DeMonaco, it was a lean home invasion horror with a catchy hook – in a dystopian future America, all laws are suspended for one day each year. Making $91m on a lean $3m budget, it was a hit, spawning three sequels, a prequel, and a spin-off TV series.
Fuller has continued to collaborate with Blum ever since, both on those Purge follow-ups and other genre movies; their latest, the thriller Drop, is due for release in spring 2025. As Fuller observes, “I’ve just finished my eighth movie with Blumhouse, so it was a very fruitful coffee that I had.”
Beyond remakes
In the years since 2010, Platinum Dunes and Fuller have changed their approach to remakes. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles emerged from the company in 2014, but it was as much a reworking of an established comic book property as it was a remake of a hit film from 1990. Fuller’s currently working on a new version of Anaconda, but with a post-modern spin – Jack Black and Paul Rudd play a pair of washed-up filmmakers who try to get their careers back on track by directing a remake of that 1997 monster flick. It’s directed by Tom Gormican, who established his meta credentials with The Unbearable Weight Of Massive Talent, a fun dissection of the career and screen persona of its star, Nicolas Cage.
“I think if we’re going to do a remake, then there has to be a real reason to do it,” Fuller says. “There has to be a big enough idea, like Anaconda as a comedy, to me, is a fun movie, right? If we’re just [remaking] the first Anaconda, with J-Lo and Ice Cube, that’s not gonna work.”
The pivotal movie for Platinum Dunes was arguably A Quiet Place, released in 2018. It was a film made with the studio’s usual approach – a strict budget of below $20m, a lean horror script, and Fuller present on set throughout production. This time, though, its key selling point wasn’t the lure of a familiar horror title from yesteryear, but rather a clever concept: Earth has been invaded by creatures with such keen hearing that the slightest sound from a human will see them slain on sight. Tautly directed by John Krasinski, it enjoyed one of the highest box office grosses in Platinum Dunes’ history to date.
Other entries have followed, including 2024’s successful and critically admired prequel, A Quiet Place: Day One.
Another of Fuller’s recent films, Elevation, although not made through Platinum Dunes, follows a similar pattern to A Quiet Place: it’s a compact, engrossing monster film in which our planet has been decimated by seemingly invincible beasts. Called Reapers, the monsters are unable to climb past a certain height above sea level, leaving survivors like Anthony Mackie’s Will stuck in tiny communities atop Colorado mountain ranges. Released in the US last year, it wasn’t a hit like A Quiet Place, but it’s nevertheless well directed (by George Nolfi) and will likely find an appreciative audience on its home release (it’s due to stream on Prime Video from the 8th February in the UK).
Platinum Dunes has had its ups and downs in recent years. Fuller and Form left the company in 2018 under what were said to be amicable circumstances, but returned four years later, having signed a first-look distribution deal with Universal Pictures. In the meantime, the film industry has itself changed. Box office takings are down across the industry, meaning movie budgets are having to be adjusted in response.
Sales of DVDs and other media – once a reliable income stream for lower-budget genre movies – have also been wiped out by streaming. All the same, Platinum Dunes is still going, and Fuller remains committed to making crowd-pleasing genre films for cinema-goers.
“My whole professional life has been about getting people into the theatre, and having this experience where everyone’s trying to feel the same thing at the same time,” Fuller says. “There’s nothing better for me, when I’m sitting in an audience and the whole audience jumps at the same time, and then they start laughing after it. That’s a wonderful thing to be a part of.”
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