Eduardo Sanchez and Daniel Myrick completely changed the game back in 1999 with The Blair Witch Project, terrifying audiences with a whole new kind of horror film and paving the way for the found footage takeover. Subsequently, a meta follow-up and later a reboot/sequel followed in the 99 film’s wake, and up next a video game will continue the legend.
But what about the future of The Blair Witch Project as a film franchise? Speaking with ComicBook.com this week, Sanchez tossed around some ideas for what he’d like to see.
“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 told the site. “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 continued, “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.”
“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. What happened to them? To me, that was the movie that I wanted to make after the first Blair Witch,” Sanchez added. “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.”
Blair Witch wasn’t exactly a massive hit back in 2016 but it did prove that if the budgets are kept low, it can still be a profitable franchise. In the meantime, bring on the game!
