The don’t-show ending of The Blair Witch Project is one of the most infamous, frustrating, polarizing, and perfect closing shots in horror movie history. It offers no closure nor explanation. It simply is what it is. But was it always supposed to be that way?

At Denver’s Mile High Horror Film Festival, I had the opportunity to sit down with Blair Witch directors Dan Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez and I asked them about the ending and their original intent. Turns out it wasn’t always supposed to be how it ended up…and the first thing Artisan wanted to do when they bought it? Change the ending.

“Well, we wanted to show something more spectacular than what we ended up with. But we couldn’t come up with an idea and we had a limited budget, so it was going to have to be something really clever. We actually didn’t have the ending of the movie when we were filming. We started shooting the movie without the ending and I remember Gregg (Hale), our producer, would come in and be like, ‘Man, you got five days,’ and we would go back and think about it.

…but we didn’t want to betray the rest of the movie. There are no real gags in the movie, we weren’t showing anything, you know, except a bundle of sticks and some teeth. And then maybe two or three days before we had to shoot the ending we came up with the idea…Artisan wanted to change it when they bought the movie. That was the first thing they wanted to do was change the ending.

At least Todd McFarlane’s McFarlane Toys was able to create their own interpretation in toy form back in their ‘Movie Maniacs’ Series 4. Good, bad? Eh.

Read more about the Blair Witch’s ending, their original plans for a prequel, their reaction to Book of Shadows, and more tomorrow when my full interview with Dan and Ed is published!