Blair Witch Project Director Teases Plans for Future Films

Back in 1999, filmmakers Eduardo Sanchez and Daniel Myrick delivered audiences a genre-changing film with The Blair Witch Project, depicting a group of filmmakers who get lost in the woods while exploring a local legend. While the film’s narrative was enough to excite audiences, the filmmaking style, featuring the actors themselves operating the cameras and the footage being cobbled together under the guise of it being “found footage,” created a worldwide phenomenon. After a sequel and a quasi-reboot failed to capture the public’s attention as effectively as the original, Sanchez confirmed he’s still interested in continuing the franchise with another film, but it would have to be as ambitious as the original.

“I still think that there is a way to bring back a little bit of the mystery of Blair Witch, which is the newness of it,” Sanchez shared with ComicBook.com. “I’m not sure if going on the sequel route is the way to do it. For me, it would have to be a uniquely singular film. It’d have to be a film that somehow had, not found footage again, of course, but something that does something that doesn’t look like a normal film, that doesn’t have the same subject matter as a normal film.”

He added, “I think that the Blair Witch film property should have gone backwards. We should have gone back in time and done period pieces of the mythology, and those elements. But again, bringing a unique vision, whether it’s a new filmmaker or a new screenwriter or somebody, but bring a unique vision to it, that sets it apart from everything else in the universe, in that world.”

Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 was directed by Joe Berlinger and Blair Witch was directed by Adam Wingard, but Sanchez himself is interested in being more involved in a future film.

“I’ve always had a desire to do the original story of how Elly Kedward was found guilty and banished into the woods, and what happened to that, Blair Township, in the late 1700s,” Sanchez detailed. “What happened to them? To me, that was the movie that I wanted to make after the first Blair Witch. We had a little bit of a window where I think we could have got it. We could have gotten it done, but the timetable wasn’t right. It just wasn’t, for a lot of different reasons.”

He continued, “I know Dan and I and [producer] Gregg [Hale], when we talk Blair Witch franchise, we always felt that each of the films would have their own signature. First of all, they obviously shouldn’t be found footage, especially the period pieces. We were thinking of shooting the Rustin Parr story in black and white and shooting the Elly Kedward story with completely unknown actors from Europe, with really thick accents. Making it as unique and authentic as possible. What the United States looked like at that time. I think that that, to me, I’m still excited about, because whether it’s the Blair Witch or something else, I still have these ideas, and I still have some films that I’d like to make, whether they’re with Blair Witch or not, I don’t know.”

Stay tuned for details on the future of the Blair Witch franchise.

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