24 years later, ‘The Blair Witch Project’ still deserves the prequel the director dreamed of

Today marks the 24th anniversary of The Blair Witch Project and we’re still waiting on that killer idea for a prequel the director mentioned many moons ago.

While a few directors have taken a stab at sequels none of them have really lived up to the phenomenon that was the original film. Everything about it from the way it was marketed to how it was filmed was a stroke of genius. The film generated an entirely new sub-genre of horror films, being the found footage format seen in the likes of Cloverfield and Paranormal Activity. 

It turns out that Director Eduardo Sánchez had some pretty bold plans for a prequel film as well. Sánchez teased his plans for Blair Witch 2 to Redditors during an AMA. Of course we never got Sánchez’s second film and fans had to settle for the weaker follow up, Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2. Apparently his planned prequel would have focused more on the witch herself, Elly Kedwards, and the town of Blair.

“Our plan was to go back a few hundred years and tell the Elly Kedward story. She’s the woman that was killed by the township of BLAIR and later became known as the BLAIR WITCH! That would’ve been damn cool.”

Whilst we never did get that, there was a short mockumentary, called Curse of the Blair Witch, which was released as part of the original movie’s marketing campaign.It mostly focused on the history of the old town and Elly Kedwards. The short was aired on the Sci-Fi channel prior to the actual film’s release.

Sadly we still haven’t gotten a good Blair Witch sequel or prequel. In fact there’s reportedly another one in the works without Sanchez’s involvement. The director’s plans seemed pretty solid and yet the film we ended up with was the opposite of what fans were hoping for. And fans could well be waiting forever as this particular Reddit AMA was from 11 years ago and there’s still no further news. We’ve had a whole reboot of the franchise come out in the time between then and now! 

When asked about the sequel we did get, Sánchez revealed that he had very little to do with it.

“We had nothing to do with the story of II. We actually told the studio that we didn’t like the story and that’s about the time that they stopped asking us for our opinions!”

That makes sense, as it feels like a completely different movie.

“The sequel just didn’t work as a BLAIR film in my opinion. It didn’t exist in the same universe as the first one.”

If only the studio were willing to put it’s faith in the original director, after all he did pretty much create the entire genre; if anyone knows how to make a solid Blair Witch film, it would be him.