Update on the Return of the BLAIR WITCH
In 1999 The Blair Which Project blew up in theaters pulling in $250 million dollars, a crappy sequel was released shortly after, but only pulled in $50 million, and that's what you get when you rush something into production. There was a good way to make a sequel that would have been successful, but that wasn't it. I have to say the marketing campign built around the original film was brilliant.
Regardless of how you feel about the Blair Witch project it was the start of a new film genre. The found footage style of filmmaking has been blowing up in Hollywood recently, some films have been great, others have sucked, it doesn't look like this style of filmmaking is going away anytime soon.
There's been talk of a third Blair Witch film for awhile, but obviously there's been no movement on it. Director Eduardo Sanchaz recently offered up an update on the third Blair witch film confirming that he's ready to make it and that it will bring back many of the original film's actors, which is interesting. Here's what he had to say,
It's completely up to Lionsgate. Dan and I are ready to do it. We've been toying around with a sequel idea that we really like. It's just a matter of getting our schedules in line and having Lionsgate sign off on the idea. We've been ready to do a 'Blair Witch' movie for a long time. We're as close as we've ever been to making it happen but it's still not a guaranteed thing.
Of course the new film would completely ignor the Book of Shadows sequel that was made,
I actually liked the sequel but at the same time it exists in a world outside of the movie. So if we want to do a sequel to 'Blair Witch Project,' we have to stay in that world, which 'Book of Shadows' didn't stay in that world. 'Book of Shadows' created a different world. It's like if the sequel to 'Jaws' started with shots of people lined up to see 'Jaws' in the movie theater. For 'Book of Shadows' it worked in a certain way but to me my biggest gripe with Artisan was you shouldn't have called it 'Blair Witch 2.' It would've been fine to call it Blair Witch Chronicles. It wasn't really a sequel to our movie. so it would be a direct sequel to our film living in that mythology of Burkittsville, being possessed, haunted by something.
He goes on to explain how the story will be told saying that "Right now, the idea has no first person in it at all, but we'll see. There's always room for new ideas to come in." He then went on to talk about the three original characters Heather Donahue, Joshua Leonard and Michael C. Williams coming back for the next film
The plan is to have them [back]. They're probably not going to be the main characters but they're definitely characters in the sequel.
If this is the case, it looks like we are going to get some answers to questions about the ending of the original movie, which is cool. I don't know about you, but I'm actually kind of excited to see a third Blair Witch movie. They created a great mythology, and there's a lot of places they could go with it. Personally, I would have liked to see a prequel film tell this actual story of the Blair Witch. I'm looking forward to see what the story for the third film tturns out to be. What do you all think?