Blumhouse’s Blair Witch Remake Is Moving Forward With Most Of The Original Cast
Josh and Mike are on board, as is the original directing team. But where’s Heather?
The original Blair Witch Project can never be replicated. That’s less because of the movie, and more because of the changing times: In the era of social media and instant fact-checking, the idea that audiences would come to see a fictional horror film believing it to be a documentary — which really did happen during the film’s initial theatrical run — is absurd. But internet access was not as widespread back in 1999, and it was much easier to control the narrative around a movie, particularly a tiny one that came out of nowhere like Blair Witch.
It’s also easy to forget that The Blair Witch Project pioneered the “shaky cam” style that’s become ubiquitous in modern found footage movies — not to mention that it essentially invented the found-footage genre! It’s a singularly influential film, in short, and redoing it requires a fresh angle on the concept. Godzilla Vs. Kong director Adam Wingard tried in 2016, basically redoing the plot of the first film with updated 2010s camera gadgetry. That didn’t go so well, so now another attempt is in the works.
One of the “Missing” flyers that helped convinced some theater-goers that The Blair Witch Project was real. 1999 was a different world.
A joint effort between Blumhouse and Lionsgate, the latest Blair Witch remake was first announced at CinemaCon in 2024, part of a package deal that would see Blumhouse “reimagining” some of Lionsgate’s more popular horror properties. That caused a bit of a dust-up, as Heather Donahue, Joshua Leonard and Michael Williams, the stars of the original film, did an interview with Variety saying that no one at Lionsgate had told them about the remake, let alone consulted them about it. The trio also sent an open letter to the studio asking for past and future residuals — they were famously shut out of the profits from the original — and “meaningful consultation” on any future projects.
That conflict has apparently at least partially been resolved, as yesterday The Hollywood Reporter broke that Leonard and Williams have joined this “new vision” as executive producers, along with the original directing team of Eduardo Sánchez, Daniel Myrick and Gregg Hale. Notably absent from this otherwise feel-good reunion is Donahue, who was a signatory on the open letter to Lionsgate along with her male co-stars.
Joshua Leonard in 1999.
Donahue retired from acting and changed her name to Rei Hance in 2008; more recently, however, she’s been appearing at conventions and meet-and-greets under her original name. She also gave her blessing to the 2016 reboot, so she hasn’t completely removed herself from the Blair Witch equation. Given that she also did not get a share of the original’s mind-boggling profits, and that she endured a level of ridicule afterwards that her male co-stars did not, it really would be a shame for her not to receive some kind of redress — unless that’s all already been settled privately, in which case, enjoy your peace, Heather.
Beyond that, we don’t know a ton about what the approach will be to this new Blair Witch Project. Director Dylan Clark will be making his feature debut on the film; Clark is just 22 years old, one of a recent wave of filmmakers like Obsession’s Curry Barker and The Backrooms director Kane Parsons who came up on YouTube. He’s also got development deals in place to turn two of his short films into features — one of them, Portrait of God, has racked up 9.6 million on the platform.
Clark is a fan of the franchise, as he told the outlet Little Black Book in 2024 in an interview about his shorts: “[My] first [short film] was this found footage, The Blair Witch Project-style film that my friends and I made in the woods by my house at around 11 years old,” he said. “Super scrappy, terrible, but a huge passion project.” Scrappiness and passion took the original The Blair Witch Project a long, long way, so maybe it’ll work for Clark, too. We’ll find out when the remake starts filming this fall.
