The year was 1999, there was a Clinton in the White House, Limp Bizkit, Who Wants To Be A Millionaire, and Pokemon were all the rage, and the scariest things were Y2K and The Blair Witch Project. Thankfully we survived Y2K and Limp Bizkit (Who’s guitarist Wes Borland now has 11 cats and a home-renovation show on the DIY network), and we flash forward to 2016 where Pokemon is just as popular as ever, there’s another Clinton vying for the White House and there is a sequel to Blair Witch.
The trailer for a movie titled The Woods was unveiled at the San Diego Comic-Con, and it turns out that it is the long-awaited reboot to The Blair Witch Project. The title of the sequel is simply Blair Witch. Using the same formula as the original, this found-footage shows unspeakable horrors of people venturing into the woods.
The sequel picks up years after the pants-shitting events of the original 1999 horror film. James Allen McCune (Shameless) wants to find out what happened to his sister, Heather Donahue, who was the lead character of the first film. So he and his dumb friends think it’s a great idea to trek into the haunted Black Hills Forest to find clues about his sister. I’m sure it will work out for them, they’ll roast some marshmallows and enjoy some tasty smores, they’ll find the information about the long-lost sister, and return home happy and totally unscathed.
Blair Witch is directed by Adam Wingard and has Simon Barrett as the screenwriter.
This isn’t the first sequel to The Blair Witch Project; the sequel Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 was released in 2000 but strayed away from the found-footage concept. A third chapter of the movie was planned in 2009 but it was abandoned. The Blair Witch Project grossed nearly $250 million worldwide on a budget of $60,000. Now that’s a nice margin, no wonder Lionsgate is rebooting the film after that massive success.
Blair Witch will be released to theaters on September 16th.