Earlier this year came the scuttlebutt that Lionsgate was gearing up to go back into the woods with a new movie in The Blair Witch Project franchise. According to Bloody Disgusting, the latest issue of Production Weekly revealed that filmmaker Oliver Park is attached to an “Untitled Blair Witch Sequel.” Park, director of last year’s movie The Offering and 2019’s A Night of Horror: Nightmare Radio, will reportedly helm the movie with filming to take place later this year. Lionsgate has not confirmed any of this so keep your grains of salt next to your freshly found footage.
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As horror fans know well, the 1999 original The Blair Witch Project was lightning in a bottle. The found footage movie was able to harness a viral marketing campaign unlike any movie before or since. Shot on a budget of just a few thousand dollars, the movie would go on to make over $240 million at the global box office, making it one of the most profitable movies of all-time.
Naturally, like the entire genre of horror movies, hopes of making a franchise out of The Blair Witch Project stalled almost immediately. A sequel was shot and released just over a year after the first film premiered. 2000’s Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 premiered in October of that year, grossing 82% less than its predecessor. Though still technically a hit, the movie’s failure killed off hopes of Blair Witch becoming the next Friday the 13th or Halloween.
After this the series would sit dormant until 2016’s Blair Witch, a reboot/sequel from Godzilla vs Kong‘s Adam Wingard that would also fail to set the box office on fire. Though the movie found its fans upon release, the movie would bring in over $38.9 million at the global box office. Should the new film in the series come to fruition like the above rumors suggest, lower costs will not only keep it connected to the original, but also make the threshold for success a low bar to clear.
