In 1999, The Blair Witch Project felt terrifying because of the “found footage” from a missing film crew with no smartphones to help when bad things happened in the woods. The movie’s producers will attempt to recontextualize and reboot that horror for the modern age when a new chapter of the franchise opens on Sept. 24, 2027.
They haven’t yet disclosed a plot or how such a movie would work (would something mystical appear on your TikTok FYP with the hashtag #TheBlairWitchChallenge?), but a teaser from Lionsgate on Instagram suggests that any hapless witch victims would have access to making digital video look like a VHS played on a VCR with tracking issues. Lionsgate honcho Adam Fogelson previously said the reboot would be “a new vision for Blair Witch that will reintroduce this horror classic for a new generation.”
Dylan Clark, whose credits include a number of shorts and an episode of the horror series Bloody Bites, will direct the film. Chris Thomas Devlin, who penned the screenplay for the 2022 Texas Chainsaw Massacre reboot and Cobweb, wrote the script, though The Hollywood Reporter says Devlin is rewriting it.
“The Blair Witch Project is one of the films that got me into filmmaking,” Clark wrote on Instagram in May. “To have the opportunity to step into that world with some of the people responsible for its creation is an absolute dream.”
Joshua Leonard and Michael C. Williams, stars of the 1999 movie, are acting as executive producers alongside Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez, who co-directed the original film. Gregg Hale who co-produced the original is also producing this one.
The original Blair Witch was a surprise hit, earning $248 million at the box office for a film that cost $35,000 to make. An immediate hit, it launched a franchise that included books, comic books, video games, and countless parodies. A glossy sequel in 2000, Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2, more than recouped its cost at the box office but was a critical disappointment, and another sequel, Blair Witch (2016), got mixed reviews.
The original Blair Witch Project ranked Number 12 on Rolling Stone’s list of the 101 Best Horror Movies of All Time. “The shaky camera movements, the grainy images, the grippingly unpolished performances: The Blair Witch Project made you feel that something terrible could happen at any moment — and come at you from any direction,” the magazine said at the time.
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