In twist at horror film screening, ‘Blair Witch’ is revived

By Brooks Barnes, New York Times News Service

Sunday, July 24, 2016 | 2 a.m.

The film was scary, but that’s not why people at a sneak peek screening of a new horror movie called “The Woods” here Friday night were screaming: In a master stroke of stunt marketing, it turned out that “The Woods” was not “The Woods” at all, but a top-secret Lionsgate sequel to “The Blair Witch Project.”

Yep. She lives.

There is nothing unusual about a studio trying to dust off an old franchise. (There were two “Blair Witch” movies, released in 1999 and 2000.) But Lionsgate’s tactics in this instance were unorthodox. Lionsgate is betting that the payoff will come at the box office in September, with moviegoers drawn to the film because it feels both new and nostalgic — in other words, not just another tired sequel.

First, the studio kept the sequel a secret by referring to it throughout a two-year development and production process only as “The Woods.” Actors were given fake scripts at auditions. Everyone working on the film had to sign a nondisclosure agreement. Character names and details were changed in shooting scripts to prevent association with the “Blair Witch” world.

Then, Lionsgate mounted a fake marketing campaign. Posters for “The Woods” were released. A trailer for “The Woods” began running in theaters. At Comic-Con International, the movie, television and comics convention underway in San Diego, Lionsgate’s booth included ads for “The Woods.” And there was the sneak peek screening at a San Diego theater.

As the movie began to play Friday night, Lionsgate marketers switched out the fake campaign for the real one. The studio released a new trailer online, changed the film’s page on the Internet Movie Database, made over its Comic-Con booth and unveiled a new website and internet banner ads. Horror bloggers, who were briefed on the secret early, posted euphoric news items in lock step.

Presto: The sequel, titled simply “Blair Witch,” began trending worldwide on Twitter. “Keeping something a secret in our social/digital/manic age of hyper-communication is almost impossible,” Tim Palen, Lionsgate’s chief brand officer, said in an email. “Thank God everyone likes a surprise, and we wisely picked the best partners to get us to the ‘switch.'”

“Blair Witch,” directed by Adam Wingard and written by Simon Barrett, will arrive in theaters Sept. 16. Set, like the first film, in the Maryland woods, it follows the younger brother of one of the murdered campers from “The Blair Witch Project.”

When it was released in 1999, “The Blair Witch Project” introduced mainstream audiences to the microbudget “found footage” genre — the concept of raw, amateur-looking video that was shot by someone who suffered a horrible death. It became one of the most successful horror movies ever, costing about $60,000 to make and collecting nearly $250 million worldwide.

One reason it was so successful was a marketing sleight of hand: Artisan, a company later acquired by Lionsgate, led audiences to believe that the gruesome events had actually happened.