The staff behind the unique 1999 movie The Blair Witch Mission didn’t know in regards to the plan for a brand new film within the horror franchise till it was introduced throughout Lionsgate‘s CinemaCon presentation final week. However the filmmakers’ frustrations over their lack of involvement in the way forward for the sequence has been constructing for years.
“It’s bittersweet, actually,” Ben Rock, manufacturing designer on the 1999 found-footage hit, tells The Hollywood Reporter in regards to the deliberate reboot. He notes that nobody from his movie, together with co-directors Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez, was concerned in any important means within the 2000 sequel, E-book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2, or the 2016 follow-up. Rock hopes this can change for the present challenge that’s within the works from Lionsgate and Blumhouse, however thus far, nobody from the 1999 film had been contacted or given an opportunity to pitch, he says.
“I do suppose that what has occurred twice now was that the unique creators had been ignored, and different folks had been introduced in, all of whom had been good,” says Rock, referring to Joe Berlinger’s 2000 sequel and Adam Wingard’s 2016 follow-up, Blair Witch. “However neither one of many sequels related with audiences the way in which they wished it to attach. And so it would at the least be price speaking to a few of the authentic creators.”
Rock was among the many members of the unique film’s staff to share reactions on social media to the information in regards to the newest challenge. Amongst these chiming in was Mike Monello, a co-producer on the primary film who helped conceive the web site claiming that the film’s horrors had been actual and that the folks showing in it had gone lacking. “Radical thought: You possibly can attempt placing this challenge within the fingers of the unique staff that made the primary one,” Monello posted, tagging Jason Blum together with Lionsgate and Blumhouse. “, the staff that really has a whole franchise plan to reinvent what a Blair Witch film could possibly be?”
Moreover, Joshua Leonard, one of many movie’s three leads (alongside Heather Donahue and Michael C. Williams), posted on Instagram relating to his personal frustrations. He realized in regards to the deliberate new film from a buddy who despatched a screenshot of a media report that used a nonetheless of Leonard as the primary picture. “I’m so happy with our little punk-rock film, and I LOVE the followers who preserve the flames burning,” Leonard wrote. “However at this level, it’s 25 years of disrespect from the oldsters who’ve pocketed the lion’s share (pun meant) of the income from OUR work, and that feels each icky and classless.”
The Blair Witch Mission was made for a paltry $35,000 (earlier than advertising prices) and was an on the spot sensation when it debuted on the Sundance Movie Pageant in January 1999. Artisan Leisure purchased the film and launched it theatrically that June. It turned a summer time phenomenon en path to touchdown as one of many 12 months’s 10 highest-grossing titles, to not point out one of the vital worthwhile movies ever made.
Rock met its administrators in school and recollects incomes $300 every week for his work on The Blair Witch Mission, though he was additionally given backend factors. Rock — who labored on creating the movie’s mythology and wrote a particular selling the film for the cable TV community Sci Fi, along with his manufacturing design duties — has nothing however fond recollections from his expertise with it. Later, Artisan employed him to seek the advice of on the franchise within the lead-up to the 2000 movie, which was launched simply over a 12 months after the primary one hit theaters, however he didn’t work on the sequel itself. Sánchez, who has just lately labored as a tv director on such tasks as Yellowjackets and Star Trek: Unusual New Worlds, and Myrick, who helmed the forthcoming documentary Triple 7, have nominal government producer credit on each sequels.
“I perceive that you would be able to be too near one thing, and possibly an outdoor perspective is useful, however in mixture, it didn’t work,” Rock says of E-book of Shadows. “They didn’t make the hit that they wished to make.” He emphasizes that he has numerous respect for Blumhouse and provides, “I’m hoping Blumhouse isn’t like, ‘Hey, let’s go reboot this with out speaking to anyone [from the first one].’ However they haven’t talked to any of us.”
THR has reached out to Lionsgate and Blumhouse for remark.
Rock recollects that again within the 2000s, Myrick and Sánchez had been hoping to work on a interval piece set within the 1700s as a follow-up to their movie earlier than the event course of in the end petered out. Rock isn’t certain that one other modern-day, shaky-footage movie could be the easiest way to maneuver the franchise ahead, which is why he thinks his movie’s artistic staff could be greatest fitted to understanding what made it work.
“I don’t understand how you outdo what we did,” he says. “However I care in regards to the franchise, so whoever does it, I hope they deal with it with care.”
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