Lionsgate and Blumhouse have announced that a new take on The Blair Witch Project is in development. That news broke at CinemaCon today, where Collider‘s Steve Weintraub and Britta DeVore are on the ground. The new movie will be the first film in a multi-picture pact with Blumhouse reimagining horror classics from the Lionsgate library. Jason Blum teams up with producer Roy Lee on the new movie; Lee previously produced the 2016 film Blair Witch.
The announcement was made during the Lionsgate presentation this morning at CinemaCon by Adam Fogelson, the chair of the Lionsgate Motion Picture Group, and Blum, who is also the founder and CEO of Blumhouse. Fogelson says: “There is no one better at this genre than the team at Blumhouse.” Fogelson explains he already created a good working relationship with Blum when working on The Purge while he was at Universal, and eventually launched STX with his film The Gift.
1999’s Blair Witch Project is considered one of the most profitable films of all time. It was made for a mere $35,000 and would go on to gross $249 million. There would eventually be a 2001 sequel, and a 2016 follow-up, which as previously mentioned, Lee produced. Blum directly links the success of Blair Witch to putting the found-footage genre in the spotlight, which also brought audiences the Paranormal Activity franchise. He says:
“I don’t think there would have been a Paranormal Activity had there not first been a Blair Witch , so this feels like a truly special opportunity, and I’m excited to see where it leads.”
What Is The Blair Witch Project?
The original Blair Witch Project (1999) follows three film students who disappear into a forest in Maryland. The students were in the forest filming a documentary on the Blair Witch. The original film was written, directed, and edited by Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez. The found-footage depicts the three students traveling to Burkittsville, Maryland to create a documentary on the local legend of the Blair Witch. Since The Blair Witch was created specifically for the movie, the success of the film would go on to produce a ‘mockumentary’ called Curse of the Blair Witch that presents the myth as real.
The Blair Witch sequel Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 did not perform as successfully as the 1999 film (it only has a 14% Tomatometer score on Rotten Tomatoes and an only marginally better 18% audience score). Eventually, there was the 2016 Blair Witch which performed better than Book of Shadows with a 38% Tomatometer score and a 31% audience score. The original film holds a certified fresh score of 86%.
via Collider