When a rebooted version of “The Blair Witch Project” was announced 25 years after the release of the iconic original, star Joshua Leonard felt as though the indie film and horror movement he had helped birth was being taken out of his hands. He called the news of the new film without his awareness “icky and classless” and representative of “25 years of disrespect.”
Today, Leonard and his associates seemed to have buried the hatchet. Leonard and co-star Michael C. Williams, along with the original’s filmmakers Eduardo Sánchez, Daniel Myrick, and Gregg Hale, will all serve as executive producers on Lionsgate‘s “Blair Witch” reboot. The film is being produced by Jason Blum of Blumhouse and James Wan of Atomic Monster along with horror producer Roy Lee in a big team-up of horror talent.
The producers have also tapped filmmaker Dylan Clark as the director of the rebooted “Blair Witch Project.” Clark (not to be confused with the producer of Matt Reeves’ “The Batman” films) is an emerging genre filmmaker and YouTuber who recently signed with Universal to adapt his horror short film “Portrait of God” into a feature, even getting Sam Raimi and Jordan Peele behind producing it. He’s also adapting another one of his shorts into a feature, “Story Time,” with Zak Olkewicz and LD Entertainment producing.
Clark is also doing a rewrite of the script, with Chris Devlin writing the original screenplay.
Also producing the new “Blair Witch” are Adam Hendricks and Greg Gilreath for Divide/Conquer. Steven Schneider is an executive producer. Michael Clear and Judson Scott are executive producing for Atomic Monster, with Alayna Glasthal overseeing for the company. Scott O’Brien and Pavan Kalidindi are overseeing the project for Lionsgate. Phil Strina negotiated the deal on behalf of the studio.
“The Blair Witch Project,” released in 1999, effectively invented the found footage horror genre. This little indie that could created a firestorm as a movie that blurred the lines between reality and fiction, with the grainy, shaky home movie footage leaving early audiences unsure of just what they were seeing. The film wound up taking in $248 million at the box office and helped inspire an entire generation of horror filmmakers to come. Today Lionsgate has spun it into a franchise, including a Vegas escape room experience.
Clark is represented by 3 Arts, UTA, and Ginsburg Daniels Kallis.
THR first reported the news.
Source:
www.indiewire.com
