Blair Witch is an American horror media franchise created by Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez, distributed by Artisan Entertainment (now Lionsgate) and produced by Haxan Films that consists of three feature films and various additional media. The development of the franchise's first installment, The Blair Witch Project, started in 1993. Myrick and Sánchez wrote a 35-page outline of a story with the dialogue to be improvised. Filming began in 1997 and lasted eight days. The film follows the disappearance of three student filmmakers in the woods near Burkittsville, Maryland, while shooting a documentary on the local legend known as the "Blair Witch".
After premiering at the 1999 Sundance Film Festival, the film was released on July 30, 1999, after months of publicity during a controversial promotional campaign. The film went on to be a massive commercial success, and a sequel, Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2, was released on October 27, 2000. A third installment, Blair Witch, was released on September 16, 2016. Series of video games, books, novels and comic books were released to accompany the films. A fourth installment was announced in April 2024 as a collaboration between Lionsgate and Blumhouse.
Legend The backstory for the film is a legend created by Myrick and Sánchez which is detailed in The Curse of the Blair Witch, a mockumentary broadcast on the Syfy Channel in 1999 prior to the release of The Blair Witch Project. Sánchez and Myrick also maintained a website at BlairWitch.com which added further details to the legend.
The fictional tale describes the murders and disappearances of some of the residents of Blair, Maryland, the fictitious former name of Burkittsville, Maryland, from the 18th to the 20th century. According to the legend, residents always blame these occurrences on the ghost of Elly Kedward (also a fictitious person), a Blair resident executed in 1785 by exposure for practicing witchcraft. The mockumentary presents the legend as real, complete with manufactured newspaper articles, newsreels, television news reports, and staged interviews in an attempt to convince viewers of its legitimacy.
According to Ben Rock, the man who created the backstory for Haxan, he took inspiration from the real Maryland legend of the woman Moll Dyer. Sometime in the winter of 1697, Dyer was accused of witchcraft, tried, and subsequently banished from Leonardtown, Maryland. Her body was later discovered frozen to a rock in the forest.
Film Title U.S. release date Director(s) Screenwriter(s) Producer(s) The Blair Witch Project Daniel Myrick & Eduardo Sánchez Gregg Hale and Robin Cowie Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 Joe Berlinger Dick Beebe & Joe Berlinger Bill Carraro Blair Witch Adam Wingard Simon Barrett Roy Lee, Steven Schneider, Keith Calder and Jess Calder Untitled film Dylan Clark Chris Thomas Devlin and Dylan Clark James Wan, Jason Blum, Roy Lee, Adam Hendricks and Greg Gilreath
Blair Witch story chronology Original continuity Alternate continuity
The Blair Witch Project (1999)
Heather Donahue, Michael Williams and Joshua Leonard, student filmmakers, set out to shoot a documentary about the Blair Witch. In the Black Hills forest near Burkittsville, Maryland, many children had vanished in the 1940s and people still avoid going too deep into the woods. The party sets out to look for facts that prove the legend, equipped only with two cameras and a little hiking gear. First, they find little piles of stone that must have been arranged artificially, later, they find themselves lost in the woods. Eerie sounds at night and more piles of stones in places where they have not been before cause the already desperate group to panic. One night, days after they should have been back home, Josh disappears. While searching for Josh, Heather and Mike find a derelict house in a clearing and go inside, where they see runic symbols on the wall next to child-sized handprints. Josh's voice seems to be coming from somewhere inside the house, and Mike rushes upstairs. Mike then realizes that the voice is now coming from the basement, and rushes down the steps. Suddenly, Mike is rendered silent and the camera falls. Hysterical, Heather follows and sees Mike in the corner of the room, faced against a wall. Suddenly Heather's camera is knocked down and she too is rendered silent. The film runs for a few seconds, then dies.
Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 (2000)
Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 returns to Maryland's Black Hills region in the wake of The Blair Witch Project and the prodigious media coverage devoted to its conflation of documentary style and supernatural legend, fans and curiosity-seekers have descended upon the movie's real-life setting of Burkittsville, Maryland. Jeff Patterson (Jeffrey Donovan), a black-sheep "townie" only recently released from a mental institution, has turned his obsession with the Blair Witch into a business and has lured four young people to Burkittsville for a tour of the Witch's purported Black Hills' haunts. Jeff's clients are also fixated on the film, for reasons they themselves may not fully comprehend. Erica Geerson (Erica Leerhsen) is a practicing Wiccan who has immersed herself in Blair Witch mythology, even though she decries the film's portrayal of her fellow witches. Grad students Tristen Ryler (Tristine Skyler) and Stephen Ryan Parker (Stephen Barker Turner) are writing a book about the Blair Witch, but disagree completely about the story's basis in fact, with folklorist Tristen arguing that it must contain some grain of truth while Stephen insists it is a textbook case of mass hysteria. Completing the group is Kim Diamond (Kim Director), a hard-edged, sardonic Goth aficionado possessed of striking psychic abilities.
After spending a strange and disorienting night at one of the most sinister sites in Blair Witch lore, the five campers awake to a scene of destruction and no memory of having gone to sleep. They return to Jeff's abandoned warehouse loft to try to piece together what happened. As Jeff leads Erica, Tristen, Stephen and Kim across the rickety drawbridge and unlocks the metal door to a chorus of barking dogs, they are entering a place no safer than the woods they just left. Inside, the legend seems to begin to bleed into reality as their mass hysteria ensues. Erica mysteriously disappears and Tristen ends up hanging herself from the second floor railing of the warehouse.
The end of the film reveals that Jeff, Stephen, and Kim have been arrested. Each is interrogated separately, with the police showing each person footage of their crimes. Security camera footage shows Kim stabbing a cashier in the neck. Surveillance camera footage shows a naked Jeff killing Erica, arranging her clothes, and putting her dead body in the closet. Jeff's video shows Stephen assaulting Tristen, pushing her over the second floor banister, and accusing her of being a witch. All three, close to a nervous breakdown, proclaim their innocence.
The tie-in mockumentary to Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2, Shadow of the Blair Witch, establishes the events of the film being a film within a film; the in-universe mockumentary reveals that Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 is "a film adaptation" based on the "Black Hills murders" that took place shortly after the release of The Blair Witch Project. Shadow of the Blair Witch follows "the real James Patterson"'s defense team as the case prepares for trial and as the public reacts to plans to fictionalize the case's events for the big screen from the defense's point-of-view. Protests of the film Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 are discussed within the documentary coming from both the families of those involved with the case and from the Wiccan community as a whole. Rachel Moskowitz and Andre Brooks respectively portray the "real" Kim Diamond and Jeffrey Patterson within the documentary.
Blair Witch (2016)
In 2009, Ed Sánchez and Daniel Myrick intended to produce a third Blair Witch film. The film was a sequel to the first film, would potentially contain the actors from the first film in some context, and would not reference any of the events from Book of Shadows. In 2011, Sánchez remarked that further development on a sequel depended on getting Lionsgate to approve the idea and for his and Myrick's schedule to match up. The film went into development hell.
At the 2016 San Diego Comic-Con held in July, the film marketed with the faux-title The Woods, turned out to be the sequel Blair Witch. The film was released on September 16, 2016.
Untitled Blair Witch film (2027) In August 2009, Eduardo Sánchez expressed interest in exploring different eras in future movies; stating: "Ideally, each Blair Witch film would be a completely different kind of movie. We've thought about doing a film that takes place in the late 1700s and looks like a [Stanley] Kubrick movie with gritty looking people and lighting".
In April 2022, Lionsgate entered early development on the next film installment, with intentions being that the project will relaunch the franchise, and that the studio is reportedly considering developing the project into a streaming exclusive film. By May 2023, Oliver Park signed onto the project as director, with Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez serving as producers. The project was said to be a joint-venture production between Lions Gate Films and Haxan Films. Principal photography was tentatively scheduled to commence later that summer or fall. At CinemaCon held in April 2024, the film was officially announced to be in development. Roy Lee will return to the franchise in his role as producer, alongside Jason Blum. The project will be a joint-venture production between Lionsgate and Blumhouse Productions. In April 2026, it was confirmed that Dylan Clark would be directing the film. That same month, it was announced that James Wan of Atomic Monster and Adam Hendricks and Greg Gilreath of Divide/Conquer joined the producing team. Michael Clear, Judson Scott, Steven Schneider, Joshua Leonard, Michael C. Williams, Eduardo Sánchez, Daniel Myrick and Gregg Hale serve as executive producers.
In May 2026, Williams confirmed that the movie would see the return of the titular villain while explaining that the new installment would not be a remake.
The film is scheduled to be released theatrically in the United States on September 24, 2027.
Television In October 2017, Sánchez and the rest of the film's creative team were developing a Blair Witch television series, though he pointed out that any decisions would ultimately be up to Lionsgate now that they own the rights to it.
Mockumentaries Four mockumentaries on the Blair Witch were produced to promote the films. The first being Curse of the Blair Witch which aired on the Syfy Channel in 1999, prior to the release of The Blair Witch Project, and the second being Sticks and Stones: An Exploration of the Blair Witch Legend which overlaps quite a bit with Curse of the Blair Witch. The latter two documentaries, The Massacre of The Burkittsville 7: The Blair Witch Legacy and Shadow of the Blair Witch, both directed by Ben Rock, aired in 2000.
Curse of the Blair Witch (1999) Before the release of The Blair Witch Project in 1999, the Sci-Fi Channel aired a 45-minute mockumentary about the Blair Witch called Curse of the Blair Witch.
The program offers firsthand interviews with several fictional colleagues and relatives of Heather Donahue, Josh Leonard and Michael Williams, including their Montgomery College film professor.
One of the highlights of the video is the first mention of Elly Kedward, the woman who would go on to become the Blair Witch.
Curse of the Blair Witch was created to give credibility to the idea that the events of The Blair Witch Project actually occurred, which was how the film was marketed upon its initial release.
Sticks and Stones: An Exploration of the Blair Witch Legend (1999)