Blair Witch co-creator Eduardo Sánchez talks unmade prequels, denies any new projects are in the works

Back in 1999, directors Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez brought the world The Blair Witch Project (watch it HERE), a low budget film that was a massive box office hit, leading to a poorly received sequel that was released the following year and a sequel that most movie-goers ignored when it was released in 2016. Sánchez is currently doing the press rounds for the horror anthology Satanic Hispanics, which he contributed to and is set to reach theatres on September 14th. While doing his part to build the hype for that movie, Sánchez sat down for an interview with the Cult FM podcast, and during that conversation he not only talked about the unmade Blair Witch prequels that he and Myrick had in mind, but also said that – as far as he knows – there are no new Blair Witch projects in the works at Lionsgate.

Speaking about the franchise’s untapped potential, Sánchez said, “This power has no morals, you can’t reason with it. It’s just this thing where sometimes it helps people leave the woods and there’s always a reason, sometimes it kills people, sometimes it takes them over, sometimes it disembowels them, sometimes it kills kids. It’s just this thing that creates turmoil and likes to mess with things. In our mythology, as far as the Blair Witch is concerned, this thing existed long before it was called the Blair Witch. The Native Americans have been living with this thing for way before Europeans got here. (Myrick and I) wrote a (prequel) to our movie probably more than ten years ago now. Lionsgate paid us and it was a legit, ‘We’re gonna let you guys write a script.’ We were really proud of the script and Lionsgate really did love the script, they just didn’t want to spend – it was a little bit too expensive for them to pull the trigger on it. I understand why they hesitated. But we wrote this script and it had a lot of Native American kind of influence, like you would see this guy on horseback and there was even a scene that gave the origins of the stick figures, why the stick figures were there. … That was the original idea for the Blair Witch movies, we wanted to bounce around in time. If we had been able to do it, we would have gone back and done the Elly Kedward story, which was the original Blair Witch, which would have had a lot of Native influence, at least a few Native American characters. Then we wanted to go and do a Rustin Parr story. We wanted to do these period piece horror movies, then eventually go into a sequel, six years down the road or ten years down the road. But unfortunately, it just didn’t work out for us to do it.“

We’ve been hearing rumblings over the last year or so that Lionsgate is interested in returning to the world of the Blair Witch. In fact, there was a Production Weekly listing earlier this year that indicated a new Blair Witch movie was going to be directed by Oliver Park, who previously directed the 2022 horror film The Offering, contributed to the anthology A Night of Horror: Nightmare Radio, and directed an episode of the show Strange Events. But Sánchez told Cult FM that – while he did acknowledge that there’s a chance he would be the last person to find out – he doesn’t think there are any new Blair Witch projects in the works. There have been meetings with filmmakers and a lot of pitches for movies or TV shows, but none have gotten the greenlight.

If a new Blair Witch movie or a TV show was to happen, it’s not likely it would be made by Myrick and Sánchez. Sánchez doesn’t think Lionsgate is interested in “the original old dudes” coming back, they’re looking for new filmmakers who are drawing attention or somebody who’s fresh off a hit. So don’t expect Myrick and Sánchez to ever get a chance to make their Elly Kedward or Rustin Parr movies.

Are you a fan of The Blair Witch Project, and would you like to see a further exploration of the mythology in more movies or a TV show? Share your thoughts on this one by leaving a comment below.