The team behind the original 1999 film The Blair Witch Project didn’t know about the plan for a new movie 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 future of the series has been building for years.
“It’s bittersweet, honestly,” Ben Rock, production designer on the 1999 found-footage hit, tells The Hollywood Reporter about the planned reboot. He notes that no one from his film, including co-directors Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez, was involved in any significant way in the 2000 sequel, Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2, or the 2016 follow-up. Rock hopes this will change for the current project that is in the works from Lionsgate and Blumhouse, but so far, no one from the 1999 movie had been contacted or given a chance to pitch, he says.
“I do think that what has happened twice now was that the original creators were overlooked, and other people were brought in, all of whom were good,” says Rock, referring to Joe Berlinger’s 2000 sequel and Adam Wingard’s 2016 follow-up, Blair Witch. “But neither one of the sequels connected with audiences the way they wanted it to connect. And so it might at least be worth talking to some of the original creators.”
Rock was among the members of the original movie’s team to share reactions on social media to the news about the latest project. Among those chiming in was Mike Monello, a co-producer on the first movie who helped conceive the website claiming that the movie’s horrors were real and that the people appearing in it had gone missing. “Radical idea: You could try putting this project in the hands of the original team that made the first one,” Monello posted, tagging Jason Blum along with Lionsgate and Blumhouse. “You know, the team that actually has an entire franchise plan to reinvent what a Blair Witch movie could…
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