Lionsgate and Blumhouse will try to catch lightning in a bottle with a new take on the found footage classic.
We’re getting a remake of The Blair Witch Project! Doesn’t strike me as a good idea! But we’ll get into that in a bit. For now, Daniel Richtman broke the news that Lionsgate and Blumhouse are partnering up on a new Blair Witch flick, much as they’re already doing for their upcoming new Saw movie, and Dread Central have confirmed it.
In the director’s chair is acclaimed short filmmaker Dylan Clark (Transfigure, Portrait Of God), who’ll be making his feature directing debut. His Portrait Of God is currently being adapted into a feature film by Sam Raimi‘s Ghost House Pictures and Jordan Peele’s Monkey Paw for Universal Pictures, so he’s certainly got the seal of approval there. You can check out the original short here:
…which I think you’ll agree is pretty great.
But The Blair With Project… man, I do not know. The 1999 original is, of course, one of the most successful horror films of all time, jumpstarting the entire found footage subgenre (no, it wasn’t the first, but it sure popularised the form) and making $248.6 million on a budget of somewhere between $500k and $750k (reports vary).
But it was a different time – with the internet in its infancy, the 90s indie boom still in full swing, and the particular choices and circumstances of production all combining to make it a both a smash hit and aan incredible film. Then we got Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 a year later, and everyone hated that, and Blair Witch in 2016, which was… fine? But certainly didn’t capture the dark magic of the original.
What I’m saying is I’m not entirely convinced that The Blair Witch Project lends itself to franchising. But hey, Clark could surprise me – stranger things have happened.
