New The Blair Witch Project Movie Reportedly in the Works

Get your old cameras ready cause The Blair Witch Project could get a new movie in the next couple of years. It’s been 24 years since the first installment in the horror franchise was released, and seven since the last one hit theaters, and fans can finally get ready for a new terrifying adventure in the woods.

Production Weekly (via Bloody Disgusting) is reporting that The Offering director Oliver Park has been hired by Lionsgate to helm an “Untitled Blair Witch Sequel” movie that could start shooting this summer. Additionally, the site informs that the production company attached to the project is no other than Haxan Films, the team behind the original movie.

The Blair Witch Project premiered in 1999 and marked a before and after within the genre. Not only because of its terrifying story and the filming format, inaugurating what is known as found footage, but also because of its marketing strategy that propelled the film to make history.

The story follows three film students, Heather Donahue, Michael C. Williams, and Joshua Leonard, who travel to Maryland to investigate the legend of a witch who lives there. To carry out their task, they go into the forest where various strange events are supposed to have happened, and many people have disappeared.

As the days and nights go by, the protagonists begin to lose their sanity and find themselves surrounded by a dark energy that plunges them into a terror they have never experienced before. The audience lives everything through their eyes and the cameras they carry, giving the film a suffocating intimacy that makes its psychological terror work perfectly.

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The Real Success of The Blair Witch Project

But there is no doubt that the true key to the success of the production was its marketing campaign, which had little to do with posters, trailers, events and what is conventionally used. The focus was on selling the movie as something real.

Directors Eduardo Sanchez and Daniel Myrick were very clear during the casting that those who applied for the leading roles would have to be willing to do whatever was asked of them to give them that sense of realism they were looking for. In fact, the three chosen ones used their real names in the film.

Some time before the premiere, a website was created asking for help in finding the three leads, leading the audience to believe that they had really disappeared, as it happens in the movie.

Another important point to add credibility to the story was that the film’s script was really short, which helped the actors to improvise many of the lines and their actions, making them more realistic.

The directors also used different strategies during the scenes to instill real fear in their protagonists, with sounds or moments that were not agreed so that their reactions were natural.

In 2016, ignoring the events from the second movie, a third film titled Blair Witch was released following another group of students led by James, Heather’s brother. They walked into the forest once again trying to find out the truth about what happened to the original three.

Unfortunately, even when this movie tried to maintain the style and tone of the first one, it didn’t have any impact. So, a new installment should definitely try to create something that honors the original but add something new too.