They offered it to us first and we took it.
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We thought “Absolutely – no one else should do this other than us”. I think we were the first filmmakers they talked to about it. They presented it to us, and because we were fans and already friends with a couple of the original filmmakers (we worked with Gregg Hale and Eduardo Sanchez on V/H/S/2), we were very excited. We thought it might be Saw or something along those lines. I knew they had acquired Artisan, but I guess I assumed the rights had expired – it turned out they hadn’t. They (executive producers Jason Constantine and Eda Kowan, who had bought You’re Next) had been talking to our producers, Steve Schneider and Roy Lee, about resurrecting The Blair Witch Project. We didn’t know what it was about, although we had our theories. But the two of us got called in for a top-secret meeting. It took a while for that film to come out because they had some corporate change-ups. Lionsgate had bought You’re Next, a film that I did with Adam back in 2011.
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Valorie Curry as Talia in Blair Witch © 2016 – Lionsgate Tell me about how your involvement with this project first began. Creative Screenwriting had the opportunity to sit down with Barrett at the Toronto International Film Festival to talk about the experience of writing a sequel to a groundbreaking film years after the fact, and make it appealing to both longtime fans as well as a new generation of horror-lovers. Now the film is finally being released and the cast and crew are able to discuss it openly. Only once they were cast were the chosen few let into the inner circle. The project was initially dubbed “The Woods” and Barrett had to write multiple versions of the script for actors to read from while auditioning for the roles. Fortunately for screenwriter Simon Barrett, he and longtime directing collaborator Adam Wingard ( You’re Next, The Guest) were already fans of the original and more than excited to accept Lionsgate’s offer.īut they had to keep it under wraps, and for a very long time.
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So when a major studio calls in two horror filmmakers for a secret meeting years later and tells them they want to resurrect the brand, the answer was obvious. Heather Donahue in The Blair Witch Project (1999) Photo by Artisan Entertainment – © 1999 Artisan Entertainment