Surprise! Adam Wingard's Made A 'Blair Witch' Sequel, Watch The Trailer [Comic-Con 2016]
Not too long ago, we heard about a new horror movie called The Woods. Though we didn't get a lot of detail at the time, we were immediately intrigued, since it was to be the next release from director Adam Wingard and screenwriter Simon Barrett, who'd previously worked together on You're Next and The Guest.
But the film has already revealed its first shocking twist. At today's The Woods Comic-Con event, Lionsgate dropped the bombshell that The Woods is actually a sequel to The Blair Witch Project.
Wingard spoke with Entertainment Weekly about the surprise sequel:
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 Woods' new title is simply Blair Witch, and stars James Allen McCune as a young man who sets out to find out what happened to his sister — the character played by Heather Donahue in the 1999 original. Blair Witch is the third entry in the horror film series, following 2000's Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2. Like the original Blair Witch Project and unlike the last Blair Witch Project sequel, Blair Witch will be a found-footage film.Blair Witch shot last summer in Vancouver, which makes it all the more impressive that the filmmakers and the marketing team managed to keep the surprise under wraps for so long. The project got going in 2013, when Lionsgate exec Jason Constantine invited Wingard and Barrett to a secret meeting to discuss the possibility of a Blair Witch sequel.
"It really has been fascinating, all the CIA-level security that we have put around this project, from the very beginning," said Constantine. "It's incredible to think about how many people needed to know about it to bring this movie to life — and yet we ended up not having any leaks in that regard."
Blair Witch is legitimately the most terrifyingly relentless movie I have seen in my life. Scarier than The Strangers.
— Jimmy Champane 🎃 (@jimmychampane) July 23, 2016
BLAIR WITCH expands the mythology in some fun ways & finally gives you a payoff to the original's final shot #SDCC pic.twitter.com/TMlk4fvIlC
— Erik Davis (@ErikDavis) July 23, 2016
Blair Witch also has the sense of humor we've come to expect from Wingard/Barrett. #SDCC
— David Bax (@daveypretension) July 23, 2016
