Jason Blum Reveals That Patrick Wilson Brought the Cast Back for Insidious Sequel

Insidious: The Red Door sees the return of the original Insidious cast members, and that’s all thanks to Patrick Wilson.

During an interview with IGN, producer Jason Blum revealed that Wilson was the one who managed to convince the Insidious cast to get back together for the upcoming sequel.

“It was his idea to bring the original cast back for The Red Door and as much as I wish I could say I could have done that, I tried to do it on [Insidious] 3 and 4 in various ways and failed terribly,” he said. “So, Rose [Byrne] would say no to me, but she would say yes to Patrick.”

Insidious: Chapter 3 and Insidious: The Last Key did see the return of several original cast members, including Lin Shaye and writer Leigh Whannell, who plays Specs. However, Rose Byrne was absent.

Insidious: The Red Door is set 10 years after the events of Insidious 2 and sees Josh Lambert (Wilson), as well as his son Dalton (Ty Simpkins), return to The Further to put an end to the hauntings once and for all. It also happens to be Wilson’s directorial debut – a nice way to start his filmmaking career by reuniting the cast of one of his biggest movies.

“[Wilson] was able to tell a story which used the cast from the original movie, and I always think that’s great,” said Blum. “I mean, we did it with Halloween with Jamie Lee Curtis. It doesn’t work if you’re just sticking the character in, but if you come up organically with a story that uses the characters from the first movie where time has passed, so the aging that has happened by nature makes sense, it’s great and Patrick was able to do that in that in the movie.”

Of course, Wilson has a long history with the Insidious franchise, having starred in the original as well as Insidious: Chapter 2.

Most importantly, he’s worked extensively with Insidious creator James Wan, and Blum thinks that gives him a unique insight into how the franchise works.

“It was terrific,” he said. “We’ve obviously known each other for a long time, since the first Insidious movie, and James and Patrick obviously have an incredibly special relationship. I mean, Patrick is like James’s muse, he’s done so much – Conjuring, Aquaman – they’ve done so much together.”

“There was a lot of great things about working with Patrick,” he added. “But the best thing was that because of his relationship with James and because of the role that he’s played in Insidious, he was really able to understand better than anyone else except James and Leigh [Whannell] what the audience expects of the movies, what to put in the movies.”

Insidious: The Red Door debuts in theaters on July 7, 2023.

Want to read more about Insidious: The Red Door? Check out the unsettling trailer for the upcoming Insidious sequel and find out more details about the film’s generational curse.

Ryan Leston is an entertainment journalist and film critic for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter.