Donald Trump Alludes to Blumhouse’s ‘The Hunt’ Being Made to ‘Inflame and Cause Chaos’

Zack Sharf

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President Donald Trump condemned Hollywood during a morning meeting August 9 outside the White House (via Variety). “We’re going to be very tough with them,” the President said of Hollywood. “They’re treating conservatives very unfairly. … Hollywood is really terrible. You talk about racist — Hollywood is racist. What they’re doing with the kind of movies they’re putting out, it’s actually very dangerous for our country. What Hollywood is doing is a tremendous disservice to our country.”

The former reality television show host’s quotes arrive in the middle of a budding controversy ignited by “The Hunt,” an upcoming Blumhouse thriller directed by Craig Zobel and written by Nick Cuse and Damon Lindelof.

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Since the trailer for “The Hunt” dropped July 30, people have criticized the film for depicting a storyline in which “elites” gather up unsuspecting Americans to hunt for sport. Backlash erupted after The Hollywood Reporter claimed the script referred to the hunted as “deplorables,” the word Hillary Clinton infamously used to describe some Trump supporters.

Although Trump has not referred to “The Hunt” by name, he alluded to the Blumhouse thriller in a series of follow-up tweets following his initial statements made this morning. “Liberal Hollywood is racist at the highest level, and with great anger and hate!” Trump wrote on the social media platform. “They like to call themselves ‘elite,’ but they are not elite. In fact, it is often the people that they so strongly oppose that are actually the elite.”

Trump added, “The movie coming out is made in order to inflame and cause chaos. They create their own violence, and then try to blame others. They are the true racists, and are very bad for our country!”

Given all of the backlash surrounding “The Hunt,” and that the trailer uses the word “elite” to describe the rich predators, it seems fairly clear that Trump is alluding to the Blumhouse movie as being dangerous for the country. IndieWire has reached out to representatives for Universal Pictures, Blumhouse, and Craig Zobel for comment.

Universal is set to open “The Hunt” in theaters nationwide September 27.

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