Well played, Adam Wingard and Simon Barrett, and you, Lionsgate. The duo behind The Guest, You’re Next and A Horrible Way To Die unveiled their new movie The Woods at Comic Con, and it turns out the reason for all the secrecy is because it’s a flipping Blair Witch Project sequel.
There’s a new trailer which shows off so many of the classic Blair Witch moments (the stick figures, getting in the corner, being so sorry), but it definitely looks like Wingard and Barrett have approached this with a hell of a lot of…energy, for lack of a better word. The trailer gets frantic, shit gets wild…this looks like something that could be quite different stylistically while keeping the terrifying spirit of Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez’s original.
Which is kind of what you want from a sequel/remake, really, isn’t it? That’s the dream.
Speaking to EW, Wingard said “The Woods was our working title. When we signed on to it, we knew that [the name] was eventually going to be changed. To us, it wasn’t even going to be part of the marketing. But I think Lionsgate made a really smart decision, using that.”
“[The original is] still the golden standard for found footage, in a way” added Barrett. “It’s pretty much unparalleled in terms of its commitment towards reality, to the point where characters [are] filming their feet while they’re yelling at each other.”
Another thing revealed in that EW interview is how long this project has been in the works for.
“We were already doing The Guest when we were first contacted,” said Wingard. “But, for me, as soon as the idea of doing a Blair Witch movie was brought up, I instantly jumped on it. I still remembered all the old mythology that went online when the first film came out.”
There’s a lot more in that article about the process of keeping the movie’s Blair Witch status a secret which is well worth a read, but for now, let’s all get excited about the fact that there’s a new Blair Witch film coming in September, and that it is, by all accounts, a very, very good one.
Blair Witch is in cinemas on 16 September 2016. Get all the latest horror news with every issue of SciFiNow.
