‘The Blair Witch Project’

Artisan Entertainment/Courtesy Everett Collection

The team behind the original 1999 film The Blair Witch Project didn’t know about the plan for a new movie in the horror franchise until it was announced during Lionsgate‘s CinemaCon presentation last week. But the filmmakers’ frustrations over their lack of involvement in the future of the series has been building for years.

“It’s bittersweet, honestly,” Ben Rock, production designer on the 1999 found-footage hit, tells The Hollywood Reporter about the planned reboot. He notes that no one from his film, including co-directors Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez, was involved in any significant way in the 2000 sequel, Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2, or the 2016 follow-up. Rock hopes this will change for the current project that is in the works from Lionsgate and Blumhouse, but so far, no one from the 1999 movie had been contacted or given a chance to pitch, he says.

“I do think that what has happened twice now was that the original creators were overlooked, and other people were brought in, all of whom were good,” says Rock, referring to Joe Berlinger’s 2000 sequel and Adam Wingard’s 2016 follow-up, Blair Witch. “But neither one of the sequels connected with audiences the way they wanted it to connect. And so it might at least be worth talking to some of the original creators.”

Rock was among the members of the original movie’s team to share reactions on social media to the news about the latest project. Among those chiming in was Mike Monello, a co-producer on the first movie who helped conceive the website claiming that the movie’s horrors were real and that the people appearing in it had gone missing. “Radical idea: You could try putting this project in the hands of the original team that made the first one,” Monello posted, tagging Jason Blum along with Lionsgate and Blumhouse. “You know, the team that actually has an entire franchise plan to reinvent what a Blair Witch movie could be?”

Additionally, Joshua Leonard, one of the film’s three leads (alongside Heather Donahue and Michael C. Williams), posted on Instagram regarding his own frustrations. He learned about the planned new movie from a friend who sent a screenshot of a media report that used a still of Leonard as the main image. “I’m so proud of our little punk-rock movie, and I LOVE the fans who keep the flames burning,” Leonard wrote. “But at this point, it’s 25 years of disrespect from the folks who’ve pocketed the lion’s share (pun intended) of the profits from OUR work, and that feels both icky and classless.”

The Blair Witch Project was made for a paltry $35,000 (before marketing costs) and was an instant sensation when it debuted at the Sundance Film Festival in January 1999. Artisan Entertainment bought the movie and released it theatrically that June. It became a summer phenomenon en route to landing as one of the year’s 10 highest-grossing titles, not to mention one of the most profitable films ever made.

Rock met its directors in college and recalls earning $300 a week for his work on The Blair Witch Project, although he was also given backend points. Rock — who worked on creating the film’s mythology and wrote a special promoting the movie for the cable TV network Sci Fi, in addition to his production design duties — has nothing but fond memories from his experience with it. Later, Artisan hired him to consult on the franchise in the lead-up to the 2000 film, which was released just over a year after the first one hit theaters, but he didn’t work on the sequel itself. Sánchez, who has recently worked as a television director on such projects as Yellowjackets and Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, and Myrick, who helmed the forthcoming documentary Triple 7, have nominal executive producer credits on both sequels.

“I understand that you can be too close to something, and maybe an outside perspective is helpful, but in aggregate, it didn’t work,” Rock says of Book of Shadows. “They didn’t make the hit that they wanted to make.” He emphasizes that he has a lot of respect for Blumhouse and adds, “I’m hoping Blumhouse isn’t like, ‘Hey, let’s go reboot this without talking to anybody [from the first one].’ But they haven’t talked to any of us.”

THR has reached out to Lionsgate and Blumhouse for comment.

Rock recalls that back in the 2000s, Myrick and Sánchez had been hoping to work on a period piece set in the 1700s as a follow-up to their film before the development process ultimately petered out. Rock isn’t sure that another modern-day, shaky-footage film would be the best way to move the franchise forward, which is why he thinks his film’s creative team would be best suited for understanding what made it work.

“I don’t know how you outdo what we did,” he says. “But I care about the franchise, so whoever does it, I hope they handle it with care.”