It’s the tenth anniversary of The Blair Witch Project, which is giving creators Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez an opportunity to revisit their surprise hit again in interviews. They may be getting a chance to revisit the movie in more than just words, however. The duo let on that they are hoping they can get the franchise resurrected and get another movie made in a recent interview with Rotten Tomatoes.
”You know how the economy is, but it seems like films that already have a brand and an established lineage like Blair Witch are the kind of films getting made, so we're hoping we can get it resurrected somehow.” Myrick said in a recent interview. ”Some of the ideas we have are more traditional narrative ideas that play with the mythology we've created around Blair Witch and what we really don't want to do is betray that mythology. We don't want to come up with some gimmicky way to shoot a sequel that's reminiscent of the first film -- because shooting like that is a gimmick -- and for it to come across as contrived. That doesn't mean that there aren't other innovative ways to play with style and process, but I think Ed and I are most concerned with honoring the mythology.
I think there’s ton of room for expansion on the franchise. After all, even people who didn’t like the execution of Blair Witch could appreciate the mythology that Myrick and Sanchez came up with surrounding the movie. The biggest mistake the studio made was moving the franchise on without its creators, which resulted in a huge mess that had very little to do with the original mythology, and didn’t build on it at all. While Blair Witch was seen as a breath of fresh air, Book of Shadows is still regarded as one of the worst sequels ever created.
I like how Myrick starts out his statement mentioning the economy. Remember, Blair Witch has the highest budget to box office ratio, costing only $60,000 to make, but earning over $140 million domestically and almost $250 million worldwide. In a time of economic crisis, this is the kind of movie any studio would want to jump behind. Even if they don’t want to recreate the original movie (which I’m thankful for), giving the two co-creators a source of money seems like a pretty intelligent choice to me.
