Blair Witch III

For those of us who were scarred by the second Blair Witch Project (Book of Shadows - a truly awful movie) and said the first one would have been 10x better, had it been about 30 minutes shorter (well, I may have been the only one who said that, but I stand by it), there's mixed news (as opposed to "good" or "bad"): the original directors are reuniting to make a third installment.

Director, Eduardo Sanchez - who likened his experience with the first movie to "winning the World Series on your first time at bat" - is coming out of self-imposed "semi"-retirement for the project. He told reporters he and co- writer and director, Daniel Myrick, originally thought of making a movie set in the 1700s, but are now discussing picking-up the story right after the end of the first Blair Witch Project movie, which made over $250 million worldwide and cost less than $100k to make.

Unlike many things, I definitely feel that it's been a decade since the first Blair Witch Project. There's no denying that Blair Witch Project broke new ground in many ways, but there is also no denying that that ground has since been well-trodden. As Sanchez notes, it's going to be largely impossible to reinvent the Blair Witch wheel, but he also notes that the second movie "broke the mythology," so this is a great opportunity for the two to break new ground - and Sanchez is aware of this, saying, "Ideally, each Blair Witch film would be a completely different kind of movie."

Let's hope the third Blair Witch Project is a "good" kind of movie.

© C Harris Lynn, 2009