Blair Witch Project
| The Blair Witch Project | |
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Theatrical release poster
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| Directed by | |
| Produced by |
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| Written by |
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| Starring | |
| Music by | Antonio Cora |
| Cinematography | Neal Fredericks |
| Edited by |
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Production
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| Distributed by | Artisan Entertainment |
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Release date
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Running time
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81 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $60,000 (est.) |
| Box office | $248.6 million |
The Blair Witch Project is a 1999 American psychological horror film written, directed, and edited by Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez. The film tells the fictional story of three student filmmakers (Heather Donahue, Michael C. Williams, and Joshua Leonard) who hike in the Black Hills near Burkittsville, Maryland, in 1994 to film a documentary about a local legend known as the Blair Witch. The three disappear, but their video and sound equipment (along with most of the footage they shot) is discovered a year later; the "recovered footage" is the film the viewer is watching.
Myrick and Sánchez conceived the idea of a fictional legend of the Blair Witch in 1993. They developed a thirty-five page screenplay that left plenty of room for dialogue improvisation since it was an outline of the event. A casting call advertisement in Backstage magazine was put up by the directors and Donahue, Williams, and Leonard were cast. The film entered production in October 1997, with the principal photography taking place in Maryland for eight days. About twenty hours of footage was shot and was edited down to eighty-two minutes.
The film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival on January 25, 1999, during which a promotional marketing campaign listed the actors as either "missing" or "deceased." The film's distribution rights were bought by Artisan Entertainment for $1.1 million. The film had its United States release on July 14, 1999, and later expanded to a wider release starting on July 30. While it received generally positive reviews from critics, the film's audience reception was polarized. Nevertheless, the film was regarded to have popularized the found footage film technique. The film became a resounding box office success, grossing almost $250 million worldwide against an estimated budget of $60,000, making it one of the most successful independent films of all time. The film spawned two sequels: Book of Shadows, which was released in October 2000, and Blair Witch, released in September 2016.
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