The original team in case the new film was axed

‘The Blair Witch Project’

Artisan Entertainment/Courtesy Everett Collection

The team behind the original 1999 film The Blair Witch Project We weren’t aware of the plan for a new film 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 series’ future have been building for years.

“It’s bittersweet, honestly,” says Ben Rock, the production designer on the 1999 found footage. Hollywood Reporter About the planned reboot. He points out that no one from his filmography, including co-directors Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez, were involved in any way in the 2000 sequel. Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2Or the 2016 follow-up. Rock hopes that will change for the current project Lionsgate and Blumhouse are working on, but so far no one from the 1999 film has been contacted or given a chance to pitch the idea, he says.

“I think what’s happened twice now is that the original creators have been overlooked, and other people have been brought in, and they’ve all been good,” says Rock, referring to Joe Berlinger’s 2000 sequel and Adam Wingard’s 2016 follow-up. Blair Witch. “But none of the sequels connected with fans the way they wanted to. So it might be helpful to at least talk to some of the original creators.

Rock was among the cast members of the original film Involved Reactions on social media to news about the latest project. Among those who participated was Mike Monello, an associate producer on the first film who helped conceive of the website claiming that the film’s horrors were real and that the people who appeared in it had disappeared. “Radical idea: You could try to put this project into the hands of the original team that made the first project,” Monello said to publish, tagging Jason Blum along with Lionsgate and Blumhouse. “You know, the team that already has a whole franchise plan to reinvent something Blair Witch Could it be a movie?

Additionally, Joshua Leonard, one of the film’s three leads (along with Heather Donahue and Michael C. Williams), posted on Instagram about his frustrations. He learned of the planned new film from a friend who sent a screenshot of a media report using a still image of Leonard as the main image. “I’m so proud of our little punk rock band, and I love the fans who keep the fire burning,” Leonard wrote. “But at this point, it’s 25 years of disrespect on the part of the people who get the lion’s share (pun intended) of the profits from our business, and that seems both bad and classless.”

The Blair Witch Project It was produced for the princely sum of $35,000 (before marketing costs) and was an instant sensation when it debuted at the Sundance Film Festival in January 1999. Artisan Entertainment purchased the film and released it theatrically in June of that year. It has become a summer phenomenon on its way to landing as one of the 10 highest-grossing titles of the year, not to mention one of the most profitable films of all time.

Rock met his managers in college and remembers earning $300 a week for his work The Blair Witch Project, although he also received back points. Rock — who worked to create the film’s mythology and wrote special promo for the film for cable TV network Sci Fi, in addition to his production design duties — has nothing but fond memories of 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 film hit theaters, but he did not work on the sequel itself. Sanchez, who has recently worked as a television director on projects such as Yellow jackets And Star Trek: Strange New Worldsand Merrick, who directed the upcoming documentary Triple 7you have nominal executive producer credits on both sequels.

“I realize that you can be very close to something, and maybe an outside perspective can be helpful, but overall, it didn’t work out,” Rock says. Book of shadows. “They didn’t get the hit they wanted to get.” He stresses that he has great respect for Blumhouse and adds: “I hope Blumhouse doesn’t say, ‘Hey, let’s reboot this without talking to anyone (from the first one).’ But they haven’t talked to any of us.”

THR We have reached out to Lionsgate and Blumhouse for comment.

Rock recalls that in the 2000s, Merrick and Sanchez hoped to work on a period piece set in the 18th century as a follow-up to their film before development eventually petered out. Rock isn’t sure that another modern-day shake-up movie would be the best way to move the franchise forward, which is why he believes his film’s creative team would be best suited to understanding what made it work.

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