Montgomery County’s ‘Blair Witch Project’ creator, Eduardo Sánchez, is returning for a reboot

Montgomery County native Eduardo Sánchez is returning to his “The Blair Witch Project” roots.

The filmmaker, who shot much of his 1999 horror film in Seneca Creek State Park, will serve as an executive producer alongside two of the original actors and his former codirector and cowriter, Daniel Myrick, in a reboot of the massively influential found-footage horror franchise.

“We love that world,” said Sánchez, 57, who attended Wheaton High School and Montgomery College. “It’s cool that other people are still interested in continuing the story.”

He and Myrick created the original “The Blair Witch Project” on a budget of less than $60,000. The film catapulted to huge commercial success, grossing nearly $249 million.

Since then, the movie has developed into a franchise owned by a major studio that turned it into two other major films and a handful of made-for-TV movies, though Sánchez and Myrick didn’t helm any others. The most recent addition to the franchise was “Blair Witch” in 2016, which was set in Maryland but filmed in Vancouver, British Columbia.

The reboot is scheduled to film in the fall, directed by Dylan Clark, a Northern Virginia native. Could “Blair Witch” finally return to its Montgomery County roots?

“It would be cool if they shot here, but I haven’t heard anything about where exactly they’re going to shoot,” Sánchez said.

The “Blair Witch” reboot was announced at CinemaCon in 2024, where film studio Lionsgate and horror production company Blumhouse made public their multifilm deal in which Blumhouse would reboot horror classics from Lionsgate’s catalog.

Sánchez said he and Myrick got the call last fall that the team got its “ducks in a row” and wanted the creators to be involved in the new project.

“They don’t owe us anything,” Sánchez said of Lionsgate, which acquired the rights to “The Blair Witch Project” in 2003. “They own it completely, so it was cool that they included us. ... I think it’s just basically helping when they need help and mostly staying out of the way.”

Original stars Joshua Leonard and Michael C. Williams are joining the executive producing lineup following a public outcry in 2024 from several alums of the original film, who were displeased that they were not initially asked to be part of the new project. Leonard said in 2024 that the original actors had gotten “25 years of disrespect from the folks who’ve pocketed the lion’s share (pun intended) of the profits from OUR work.”

Sánchez said he is confident the new filmmakers, with the backing of its original creators, will do the “Blair Witch” legacy justice.

Clark is “very talented,” Sánchez said. “He seems very respectful of the original and very interested in all the details of how we did it. He seems to be the right choice. I’m excited about it.”