Prolific horror studio Blumhouse is teaming with Lionsgate for a new “reimagining” of The Blair Witch Project, it was announced at CinemaCon today.
It’s part of a new multi-picture pact that will have Blumhouse “reimagining horror classics from the Lionsgate library,” per the announcement. Blumhouse CEO Jason Blum will team with Roy Lee, who worked on 2016’s Blair Witch, to produce, but no other details were revealed.
“I’m very grateful to (Lionsgate Motion Picture Group chair) Adam (Fogelman) and the team at Lionsgate for letting us play in their sandbox. I’m a huge admirer of The Blair Witch Project, which brought the idea of found footage horror to mainstream audiences and became a true cultural phenomenon,” Blum said in a statement. “I don’t think there would have been a Paranormal Activity had there not first been a Blair Witch, so this feels like a truly special opportunity and I’m excited to see where it leads.”
Blumhouse is best known for producing reliably profitable horror movies on a tight budget, including the aforementioned Paranormal Activity franchise, Insidious, The Purge, Sinister, the rebooted Halloween trilogy, M3GAN, and Five Nights at Freddy’s. Most recently, it worked with Lionsgate on last month’s horror film Imaginary.
As Blum mentions in his statement, The Blair Witch Project was massively influential after its 1999 release, popularizing the enduring “found footage” genre. It generated buzz with an unconventional marketing campaign – one of the first ever to largely take place on the internet – that aimed to raise questions over if the events in the movie had actually happened.
The Blair Witch Project ended up grossing $248 million at the worldwide box office, an astonishing profit margin when it was reported to have been made for less than $1 million. It spawned two follow-ups: 2000’s poorly reviewed sequel Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 and 2016’s Blair Witch, which ignored the events of Book of Shadows and acted as a direct sequel to The Blair Witch Project.
For more out of CinemaCon 2024, check out our roundup of all the announcement from last night’s Warner Bros. presentation.
Alex Stedman is a Senior News Editor with IGN, overseeing entertainment reporting. When she’s not writing or editing, you can find her reading fantasy novels or playing Dungeons & Dragons.
