Fans hoping to catch the first screening of the upcoming horror flick “The Woods” at Comic-Con International got the surprise of a lifetime Friday: the film is actually a secret sequel to “The Blair Witch Project.”
Now re-titled “Blair Witch,” the follow-up to the 1999 classic sees a group of college students venture into the Black Hills Forest to investigate the disappearance of James’ (James Allen McCune) sister, played by Heather Donahue in the original.
So how did the project manage to stay top secret until now? Few people involved with the production were clued into its true nature – in fact, even the cast didn’t know what they were auditioning for until after they scored their roles. “It must have seemed like the lamest film ever, because anytime anyone had to say the words ‘Blair Witch,’ we had to replace it with the words ‘car wraith,'” director Adam Wingard reveals.
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“They were the worst scenes ever,” writer Simon Barrett adds of the audition process. “[The actors] basically thought they were auditioning for a terrible ‘Blair Witch’ ripoff.”
“Blair Witch” arrives in theatres September 16.
