Adam Wingard and Simon Barrett’s 2016 Blair Witch, a followup to the seminal 1999 found footage film, The Blair Witch Project, was met with mixed reviews. Originally, the writer and director had intended to expand their reimagining into a franchise with at least one more movie delving more deeply into the mythology of those woods and the Blair Witch herself. However, the pair now believes this sequel will never happen.

Blair Witch is a direct followup to The Blair Witch Project, focusing on the little brother of the central character, Heather, who has become obsessed with trying to figure out what happened to his sister. When he comes upon a YouTube post from someone claiming to have found more tapes in the woods of Burkittsville, he brings his film school friends on a trip to go looking for his sister.

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Huge fans of the original Blair Witch Project, writing and directing team Barrett and Wingard set out to expand on the mythology in the 1999 movie. However, based on the box office performance of their 2016 Blair Witch sequel, the team will most likely never be able to continue their story, leaving audiences with the question: where could the Blair Witch franchise go next?

Blair Witch 2016 Valorie Curry as Talia Screaming

In the director commentary of Blair Witch, Simon Barrett and Adam Wingard discuss their motivations for creating the movie, the audience reception to the film, and why they’ll never make a sequel. In this discussion, they revealed that their intention was to create the 2016 Blair Witch in order to set up a much weirder movie that would delve deeper into the lore of the Blair Witch and the woods themselves.

Unfortunately, though the movie did fairly well monetarily, it was considered a box office flop and received mixed reviews from audiences and critics. The team caught a lot of flak for their interpretation of the classic found footage film, but upon examining the movie more closely, it’s clearly a deeply personal labor of love. It’s truly a shame no one will ever see the celebration of Blair Witch lore that might have been if audiences had been more open to the 2016 Blair Witch.

Moving forward, it’s likely audiences will see some sort of expansion on The Blair Witch Project franchise, but most likely not from Barrett and Wingard. Back in 2017, the co-director of the original movie, Eduardo Sanchez revealed to the Diminishing Returns podcast that there was a Blair Witch TV series in the works. Though he wasn’t willing to provide too many details on the project, what he did reveal seemed to indicate some sort of anthology show, which is an interesting idea for the franchise.

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That being said, the rights for the Blair Witch franchise now lie in the hands of Lionsgate and not its original creators. Additionally, Daniel Myrick, The Blair Witch Project’s other creator has apparently not yet been contacted about the potential TV series, suggesting that the show is in the earliest stages of development, and is a long way off from being green-lit, assuming it gets the go-ahead at all.

However, Lionsgate did make a decent profit off of Blair Witch (2016) despite the low box office performance, so while another theatrical release is unlikely, a TV series might be just the direction for the franchise. A large obstacle to the success of Blair Witch (2016) was the stalwart fans of the original movie hating the idea of any changes being made to the story; a series might be a great way to get around this hurdle, especially with an anthology-type series offering different stories all set in the same area, or something similar.

All things considered, with the success of The Blair Witch Project video game and the popular Hunt a Killer mystery box utilizing the Blair Witch as the theme for its latest horror series, it’s clear that the name still draws people in and the franchise is quite profitable. Though audiences may never get to see Adam Wingard and Simon Barrett’s vision fully realized on screen, it’s likely Blair Witch fans will get to see more of the franchise soon.

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