SB: People probably forget that Book of Shadows came out 15 months after the original. Being a fan of the original film, it was very transparent that there was all this cash-in stuff, and that sucked the life out of it right away. All this stuff that they just immediately did without trying to actually set up the franchise. Bad video games, bad adaptations, book adaptations.
If you go back in time and look at all of the marketing materials that came out after the first film, they just tried to bleed that thing immediately. You can see how things went south on it becoming a franchise right away. Only in the last five years or so has it resurfaced and come out on top as a horror classic.
BLAIR WITCH 2016 MONSTER MOVIE
I think it took a lot of people a while to take the first movie seriously again. So it was a chance to do something really fun and creative and different, because no one really has any preconceived expectations of what a Blair Witch film in 2016 would be.ĪW: One of the questions we get asked a lot is, "Were you afraid of competing with the legacy of the first film?" My answer to that is always that the legacy of the first film had basically been completely tarnished by how bad the sequel was and how off the rails it went. It was kind of a blank slate, because the first film really has a very complex mythology, but it hints at it very obliquely. SB: I think something that creatively excited me about it was that there’s no obvious kind of version of what a Blair Witch sequel is. I remember asking him, "When do you think you’re going to make a Blair Witch sequel? Because it feels like it’s the right time." There were all these lesser found footage horror films coming out, that were doing well at the box office, but that everybody just seemed to kind of hate, honestly. We had just met Eduardo Sánchez and Gregg Hale, the original creators of The Blair Witch Project, only a few weeks before at Sundance, and I was picking Eduardo’s brain endlessly about Blair Witch Project on a long van ride to Salt Lake City. What was it about the property that changed your minds? "There were all these lesser found footage movies that everybody just seemed to hate."Īdam Wingard: Found footage has really gone through so many different facets over the years, it felt like it was time to return to what originally started it all. Blair Witch was the first one where it was like, "Absolutely, that’s something we really want." We’ve been offered a lot of remakes and sequels over the course of our careers, especially after You’re Next was a success, and none of them were creatively exciting to us. That was February 2013, and that was really the beginning. It’s top secret, even here at the company." No one outside that circle knew about it, and they wanted to know if that was anything we’d be interested in, I think partially because they were also fans of the two VHS films that Adam and I worked on. And they told us, "We own the rights to The Blair Witch Project and we’re talking about doing another one. We weren’t quite sure what it was about we just hoped it wasn’t that they were postponing our release any further, honestly. Simon Barrett: Lionsgate had bought our film You’re Next, and during the window between them acquiring it and releasing it, they set up this top-secret meeting for Adam and me at their studios in Santa Monica. How did you get involved in the first place? This film was a secret for a really long time. I sat down with Wingard and Barrett here in Toronto to talk about why The Blair Witch Project worked, their rather strong feelings about how 2000’s rush-job sequel Book of Shadows ruined it all, and what was key to bringing the franchise back from the dead. Made totally under the radar, Blair Witch was such a secretive project that it was actually marketed this year under an entirely different name, until Lionsgate made the big reveal at this year’s Comic-Con. They’re here at TIFF to show Blair Witch, their sequel to the 1999 found footage classic about a bunch of filmmakers that disappeared in the forests of Maryland. But as a duo, they’re open and engaging, Barrett cracking up in silent laughter whenever Wingard goes on a passionate tear.
These are the same two guys that dreamed up the animal mask murderers of You’re Next, after all, before they turned Downton Abbey softie Matthew Crawley into a killing machine in The Guest. The strangest thing about talking to writer Simon Barrett and director Adam Wingard is just how nice they both seem.
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