The Blair Witch Project

The Blair Witch Project is a 1999 American horror film written and directed by Eduardo Sánchez and Daniel Myrick. The film was produced by the Haxan Films production company. Though fictional, it is presented as "found footage", as if pieced together from amateur footage, and popularised this style of horror movie. The film relates the story of three student filmmakers (Heather Donahue, Joshua Leonard, and Michael C. Williams) who disappeared while hiking in the Black Hills near Burkittsville, Maryland in 1994 to film a documentary about a local legend known as the Blair Witch. The viewers are told the three were never seen or heard from again, although their video and sound equipment (along with most of the footage they shot) was discovered a year later by the police department and that this "recovered footage" is the film the viewer is watching.

The film received enormously positive reception from critics and went on to gross over US$248 million worldwide, making it one of the most successful independent movies of all time. The DVD was released in December 1999 and presented only in full-screen.

A studio production film based on the theme of The Blair Witch Project was released on October 27, 2000 titled Book of Shadows. Another sequel was planned for the following year, but did not materialize. On September 2, 2009, it was announced that Sánchez and Myrick were pitching the third film. A trilogy of video games based on the film was released in 2000.