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However, just because producers and studio executives keep trying to revive every well-known horror saga doesn’t mean that this should be a common practice. Some franchises need to be left dormant. Case in point: The Blair Witch Project universe, which is set to expand with a Lionsgate/Blumhouse-produced entry that’s already in immense creative peril from the get-go.
Let The Blair Witch Rest In Peace
The strangest part about Lionsgate continuing to pursue another Blair Witch movie is how making follow-ups to this 1999 phenomenon has already proven to be a bad idea. Back in 2000, Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 absolutely bombed at the box office despite opening a little over a year after the original Blair Witch Project. In September 2016, Adam Wingard’s Blair Witch debuted and came in severely under box office expectations. Not only did these two films dilute the novelty of a Blair Witch sequel, but they’ve also proven the brand name isn’t guaranteed to get people into theaters.
It’s also a tremendous miscalculation to not understand how The Blair Witch Project was a once-in-a-lifetime smash. It was the first mainstream English-language found-footage movie and exploited the internet for viral marketing that hadn’t been seen before. To boot, the feature itself relied on self-contained horrors and chilling uncertainty that would be undercut by returning to the woods the Blair Witch calls home. Blair Witch Project is a masterpiece and the qualities informing its artistry are impossible to recreate.
The decline of the found footage genre also makes returning to this horror well puzzling. Unless it’s a V/H/S entry, this domain has largely migrated to the Screenlife space, if it exists at all. Audiences quickly grew sick of these titles (as evidenced by Blair Witch bombing) after Cloverfield and Paranormal Activity revived them in the late 2000s. Bringing this subgenre back simply to regurgitate the Blair Witch Project lore would almost certainly not be enough to justify found-footage’s return. Horror is doing just fine without it.
Bringing Back Dormant Horror Movie Franchises Isn’t a Recipe for Success
The other strange thing about Lionsgate and Blumhouse pursuing more Blair Witch Project is that it doesn’t even make much sense from a purely business-driven sense. Clearly the inspiration for doing another one of these films is the tremendous box office hauls of 2018’s Halloween and 2022’s Scream. However, those were both smash successes specific to those beloved brand names, rather than a reflection that all old horror brand names could now make untold millions at the box office.
Case in point: Blumhouse brought back The Exorcist with 2023’s The Exorcist: Believer, which fizzled out at the box office and did not spawn the lucrative trilogy its financiers were hoping for. I Know What You Did Last Summer, meanwhile, came in way under expectations in summer 2025 and Blumhouse’s Wolf Man redo absolutely bombed. Final Destination Bloodlines and The Conjuring: Last Rites were licenses to print money, sure, but prior sequels in those franchises had way better financial track records than the two already-existing Blair Witch sequels. Contrary to conventional film industry wisdom, brand names do not automatically equal huge box office numbers.
Further Blair Witch movies must also contend with the lingering toxicity of Blair Witch Project lead actors alleging that they’ve been unfairly compensated long-term for their contributions to the 1999 classic. It’ll be hard to craft a “legacy sequel” thriving on nostalgia with the original Blair Witch actors stuck in this position (imagine if 2018’s Halloween tried to exist while Jamie Lee Curtis alleged unfair pay on the original Halloween). That initial Blair Witch Project remains an eerie feat of DIY horror, but just because it’s endured as a classic doesn’t mean it should get endlessly exploited as a franchise. Those two follow-up boondoggles make it clear: the Blair Witch should be left alone.
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