I remember The Blair Witch Project clearly. It was, quite simply, a phenomenon. I saw it in a packed theater just outside Carrollton, TX, and the auditorium was full of squeals and screams and sharp intakes of breath as the movie worked its magic. We were all caught up in it.
Which is weird, because when I revisited it at home on DVD a few months later, I thought it was a pile of shite.
We all fell for it. The Blair Witch Project became possibly the first example of a “viral” movie, piggybacking on the early internet of Yahoo, AOL CDs in magazines, and dial-up connections. Made for just $35,000, it would go on to gross $249 million globally and set all kinds of records for profit multiplier.
It basically kick-started the entire found footage genre, and spawned both a 2001 sequel and a 2016 reboot.
Well, now it is coming back, as short filmmaker Dylan Clark has been tapped up by Lionsgate and Blumhouse to helm the new version as part of his multi-film deal.
DanielRPK reported it, and Dread Central just confirmed it.
This all comes off the back of Clark’s viral horror short Portrait of God getting notices and being picked up for a full adaptation by Sam Raimi’s Ghost House Pictures and Jordan Peele’s Monkey Paw over at Universal Pictures. That follows a young religious woman preparing a presentation on a portrait that looks completely black to almost all. Some report seeing a person in the darkness of the picture, an entity that’s not entirely benevolent.
