Over 25 years after it defined found-footage horror for a generation, one of the most terrifying horror movies of the 1990s is making a comeback. It’s a film that kicked off an entire genre while making a fortune at the box office off a paltry production budget; and while it’s had a handful of sequels, none have come close to the original’s staying power. Now, Lionsgate is betting that they can buck the trend with a rising star in the world of horror.
The Blair Witch Project, courtesy of YouTube horror prodigy Dylan Clark. Clark is a hot commodity in the horror world, having been signed on to direct a feature-length expansion of his short Portrait of God, which will be produced by Sam Raimi and Jordan Peele. Not only is Clark on board, but Lionsgate, who merged with The Blair Witch Project‘s original distributor, Artisan Entertainment, in 2003, is getting almost the whole band back together behind the scenes. Eduardo Sánchez, Daniel Myrick, and Gregg Hale, the filmmakers behind the original film, have signed on as executive producers, as have Joshua Leonard and Michael C. Williams, who starred in the film as two-thirds of a doomed trio of would-be documentarians.
Collider Exclusive · Horror Survival Quiz Which Horror Villain Do You Have the Best Chance of Surviving? Jason Voorhees · Michael Myers · Freddy Krueger · Pennywise · Chucky
Five killers. Five completely different ways to die — if you’re not smart enough, fast enough, or self-aware enough to avoid it. Only one of them is the villain your particular set of instincts gives you a fighting chance against. Eight questions will figure out which one.
🏕️Jason
🔪Michael
💤Freddy
🎈Pennywise
🪆Chucky
01
Something feels wrong. You can’t explain it — you just know. What do you do? First instincts are the difference between the survivor and the first act casualty.
02
Where are you most likely to find yourself when things go wrong? Setting is everything in horror. Where you are determines which rules apply.
03
What is your most reliable survival asset? Every survivor has a quality the villain didn’t account for. What’s yours?
04
What kind of fear is hardest for you to fight through? Knowing your weakness is the first step to not dying because of it.
05
You’re with a group when things start going wrong. What’s your role? Horror movies are brutally clear about who survives group situations and who doesn’t.
06
What’s the horror movie mistake you’re most likely to make? Honest self-assessment is a survival skill. Denial is not.
07
What’s your best weapon against something that can’t be stopped by conventional means? Every horror villain has a weakness. The survivors are always the ones who find it.
08
It’s the final scene. You’re the last one standing. How did you make it? The final survivor always has a reason. What’s yours?
Your Survival Odds Have Been Calculated Your Best Chance Is Against…
Your instincts, your strengths, and your particular way of thinking under pressure point to one villain you actually have a fighting chance against. Everyone else — good luck.
Camp Crystal Lake · Friday the 13th
Jason Voorhees
Jason is relentless, but he is also predictable — and that is the gap you would exploit.
He moves in straight lines toward his target. He doesn’t strategise, doesn’t adapt, doesn’t outsmart. He simply pursues.
Your ability to keep moving, use the environment, and resist the panic that freezes most victims gives you a genuine edge.
The Crystal Lake survivors were always the ones who stopped running in circles and started thinking about terrain, water, and distance.
You think like that. Which means Jason, for all his indestructibility, would face someone who simply refused to be where he expected.
Haddonfield, Illinois · Halloween
Michael Myers
Michael watches before he moves. He is patient, methodical, and almost impossible to detect — until it’s too late for anyone who isn’t paying close enough attention.
But you are paying attention. You notice the shape in the window, the car parked slightly wrong, the silence where there should be sound.
Michael’s power lies in the invisibility of ordinary suburbia — the fact that nothing ever looks wrong until it already is.
Your spatial awareness and instinct to map every room, every exit, and every shadow before you need them is precisely the quality Laurie Strode had.
You are not a victim waiting to happen. You are someone who already suspects something is wrong — and acts on it.
Elm Street · A Nightmare on Elm Street
Freddy Krueger
Freddy wins by getting inside your head — using your own fears, your own memories, your own subconscious as weapons against you. That strategy requires a target who can be destabilised.
You are harder to destabilise than most. You’ve faced uncomfortable truths about yourself and you haven’t looked away.
The survivors on Elm Street were always the ones who understood what was happening and chose to face it rather than flee from it.
Freddy’s greatest weakness is that his power evaporates in the presence of someone who refuses to give him the fear he feeds on.
Your psychological resilience — the ability to stay grounded when reality itself becomes unreliable — is exactly the quality that keeps you alive here.
Derry, Maine · It
Pennywise
Pennywise is ancient, shapeshifting, and feeds on terror — but it has one critical vulnerability: it cannot function against someone who genuinely stops being afraid of it.
The Losers Club didn’t survive because they were braver than everyone else. They survived because they faced their fears together, and faced them honestly.
You ask the questions others avoid. You look directly at what frightens you rather than turning away.
That directness — the refusal to let fear fester in the dark — is Pennywise’s worst nightmare.
It chose the wrong target when it chose you. You are exactly the kind of person whose fear tastes like nothing at all.
Chicago · Child’s Play
Chucky
Chucky’s greatest advantage is that nobody takes him seriously until it’s already too late. He exploits the gap between how something looks and what it actually is.
You don’t have that gap. You take threats seriously regardless of how they present — and you never make the mistake of underestimating something because of its size or appearance.
Chucky relies on surprise, on the delay between recognition and response. You close that delay faster than almost anyone.
Your instinct to treat every unfamiliar thing with appropriate scepticism — rather than dismissing it because it seems absurd — is the exact quality that keeps you breathing.
Against Chucky, not laughing is already winning. You are very good at not laughing.
What Is ‘The Blair Witch Project’ About?
Leonard, Williams, and Heather Donahue play fictionalized versions of themselves who venture into the woods of Maryland to make a guerrilla documentary about the legendary Blair Witch who is said to dwell there. Soon, they find themselves impossibly lost, and are beset with all manner of supernatural phenomena. Made for $60,000 USD, the film was a surprise hit at Sundance, and was snapped up by Artisan, who employed several novel marketing techniques that made audiences feel as if the movie was an actual documentary, including “Missing” posters for the actors and a website that laid out the “facts” of the case. The marketing was a success; the film grossed $248.6 million in the summer of 1999, making it one of the most profitable films ever made. A sequel, Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2, followed in 2000; directed by acclaimed documentary filmmaker Joe Berlinger (Paradise Lost), it largely abandoned the found-footage concept and was dismissed by critics and audiences. Adam Wingard (You’re Next) tackled the franchise in 2016 with Blair Witch; it too received mixed reviews.
The Blair Witch Project reboot will be directed by Clark, who is also penning a new draft of the screenplay; the original script was written by Chris Devlin (Cobweb). It is produced by Atomic Monster’s James Wan and Blumhouse’s Jason Blum, Divide/Conquer’s Adam Hendricks and Greg Gilreath, and Roy Lee. Michael Clear and Judson Scott will executive produce for Atomic Monster.
A reboot of The Blair Witch Project is in development; no release date has yet been announced. Stay tuned to Collider for future updates.
