It seems that the success of the box office phenomenon
Paranormal Activity has kickstarted the efforts the pioneering indie filmmakers a decade before them.
The Toronto Star recently spoke with
The Blair Witch Project co-director Eduardo Sanchez, who revealed that he and co-director Daniel Myrick are readying
The Blair Witch Project 3. Here's an excerpt from the article.
They're now at the point where they're ready to do a Blair Witch 3, once again sharing writing and directing. They'd pick up from where the original left off, pretending
Blair Witch 2 never happened. The duo recently went on a drive through their original Blair Witch haunts, about a half hour from Sánchez's Maryland home, looking for inspiration.
They've worked up a treatment for a new story, which would involve original cast members Heather Donahue, Joshua Leonard and Michael C. Williams, albeit in smaller roles.
"We're at the step where we're about to pitch to Lionsgate, which owns the movie rights now. It's pretty much up to them. They can completely squash it or greenlight it."

for the full article where Sanchez speaks about
Paranormal Activity and the new narrative structure for the third film. We'll be sure to keep you posted as new information on this project comes in.
40 Comments
Well Celluloid, you're just a cynic then. Nothing can scare you, because your a tough guy. Is that it?
Well, it's about ten years after the first Blair, so if they were going to make it work, by having the original actors star in it, they could pull a storyline from true headlines. Remember the girl who was kept captive for all of those years and was a sex slave to that hillbilly? Why not have the original actors being held, in a dungeon of sorts, and then they get found by four other film students (like ridgl suggested) but then they all get lost again and the baddie is stalking them in the woods. But in this one, the baddie finally gets killed.
I remember way back in 1999 living in Denver, Co waiting for over 2 hrs in the snow to seee "The Blair Witch Project" ....I mean come on the marketing campaign was huge ....it looked scary etc!
Then I saw the film ....what a dud!!! I wasn't scared! I laughed!!
If you thought that "Star Wars Episode 1" was the most over-hyped letdown of the year, get ready. "The Blair Witch Project" is so shockingly bad it could have been made by your ninth grade brother's friends on their first camping trip this summer.
Seeing the box office take of Paranormal Activity, it's a no-brainer. I hope and pray that the shitty Porn Torture film fad has passed, and some real scare flicks get made again.
Bring them on!
If they got smart they'll show other slow scene's which would promote the film without ruining it.
It's like seeing a trailer of G.I. Joe, all the good scenes tells the entire story in less than a minute.
Yeah, because Paranormal Activity is the first movie to use a hand-held camera POV...try The Blair Witch Project, Cloverfield, REC, it's American counterpart Quarantine...hell, even Romero has made one.
How do you know they weren't working on this before Paranormal Activity was released?
If Paranormal Activity is going to get brought up every time a new "startling" movie is reported on like TDK is brought up with every comic book movie, I might have a seizure.
When I was twelve I stopped being scared, but I do enjoy horror films still. Hell I was watching the Texas chainsaw remake last night, I enjoyed it.
I've stopped buying DVD's for a while, next year I buy a few.
PA looks like a child had put it together. Doors shutting is an old trick, fake bites another old trick, sand prints and the bed sheet moving are all old tricks. I'll watch it when its out on dvd, but not before. Hell, I could make a much better horror film but I won't.
and for everyone who is saying that the ending was the only good part... the entire movie was building up to that one scene. i agree that the movie was not as scary as promoted, but that ending is absolutely terrifying and that is because of the build up to it which was brilliantly done
PA might work better for folks who haven't seen Frailty or the Orphanage, two of the more recent non-slashers that come to mind.
And if we wanna stay with the theme of being tormented in one's home (though by a completely different entity), I recommend the Strangers over PA. Come to think of it, the Others was a pretty damn good trapped-in-a-house ghost story.
I think the main ingredient for a ghost story to work is atmosphere, which I don't think can be fully achieved shooting in digital, or, you know, without one of those pesky cinematographers.
I do hand it to PA's filmmaker's for doing what they did with a mere $15 grand, but it just didn't work for me.
I think the biggest problem I had with it was the male protagonists motivations, like "fuck calling an expert, I've got baby powder!" - but without which we wouldn't have gotten to the aforementioned ending. His rationale wasn't 'real world' thinking...
It's hard to invest in a film where one of the main characters keeps working against all avenues of logic. Where scene after scene you keep being taken out of the movie by the overwhelming thought of "why the hell would he do that?".
Scary or not, that's just poor film-making.
did i annoy anyone?