Blumhouse and Lionsgate are teaming up to produce a new film in the Blair Witch Projectfranchise, and there are already exciting updates about the movie. Debuting in 1999, The Blair Witch Project turned Hollywood on its ear when the extremely low-budget indie horror film took the world by storm. The pioneering found footage movie was shot on handheld camcorders and follows a group of young adults as they traverse the Maryland woods in search of the eponymous legend. What made the movie so memorable was that it had audiences guessing about what was real and what was fiction. 324w5h

The Blair Witch Project production designer Ben Rock calls out Lionsgate and Blumhouse for their lack of communication with the original movie's creative team as they develop a reboot of the influential found-footage horror movie. Released in 1999, the original movie is a harrowing of an amateur documentary team's encounter with unfathomable, indescribable horror that aimed to leave audiences unsure if what they saw was true. The Blair Witch Project then spawned a franchise, with the most recent development being Lionsgate and Blumhouse's surprise reboot.

Blumhouse's new Blair Witch Project may be exciting but it already seems to have lost what made the original 1999 film so memorable. Despite having a shoestring filming budget of $35,000–60,000, the original Blair Witch Project went on to earn $250 million worldwide, ranking it among the most commercially successful horror movies. For obvious reasons, the movie's success led to the development of two follow-up films, Book of Shadows and Blair Witch. Unfortunately, both sequels failed to recreate the original's success and have seemingly been forgotten by audiences.

The Blair Witch Project's Joshua Leonard expresses his frustration with the announcement that a reboot is in development. Leonard starred in the original 1999 movie, which plays out in a "found footage" style as viewers watched the remaining footage of three amateur filmmakers who mysteriously disappeared while shooting a documentary about the Blair Witch myth. It is often credited with popularizing the found footage style and has enjoyed an enduring legacy as a horror movie classic.

A new Blair Witch movie has been announced with Blumhouse and Lionsgate collaborating to bring it to life, but they are ignoring the biggest challenge created by the movie that kicked off the Blair Witch franchise. The found-footage genre within the world of horror got a major boost in 1999 with The Blair Witch Project, directed by Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez. The Blair Witch Project introduced viewers to Heather Donahue, Michael C. Williams, and Joshua Leonard, three filmmaking students who went into the Black Hills forest to make a documentary about the local myth of the Blair Witch.

A new Blair Witch movie is in the works, eight years following the release of the last one, and the film has the ability to (finally) break one of the franchise's most frustrating curses. The horror film series dates back to 1999 when the first installment — The Blair Witch Project — premiered and changed the course of cinema. The movie's usage of found footage is iconic and inspired a plethora of other projects, including Paranormal Activity, Cloverfield, Project X, and many more. Plus, the horror movie was so scary that many left their theater early, cementing its legacy.

A new Blair Witchmovie is coming. The franchise kicked off in 1999 with the smash hit independent feature The Blair Witch Project, which was an early entry in the found footage boom that purported to be the last footage shot by a group of film students who went missing in the Maryland woods while making a documentary about a local legend known as the Blair Witch. The movie was immediately followed by a non-found footage sequel in 2000 and later by a 2016 found footage sequel directed by Adam Wingard.