News
Blair Witch Project Director Open To Releasing Extended Cut
Written by John Squires
On September 16th, one of the most influential and iconic horror movies of all time gets a follow-up in the form of Blair Witch, a years-later sequel that centers on one man’s quest to uncover what happened to his missing sister (Heather) back in the 1990s. With the franchise once again in the limelight, could we someday soon see the much-talked-about extended cut of the original classic?
As hardcore fans of The Blair Witch Project should know by now, the film ran 2 1/2 hours long when it was publicly screened for the first time, but was eventually cut down to just 81-minutes. In total, directors Eduardo Sanchez and Daniel Myrick walked away from the shoot with an incredible 19-hours of footage, and speaking with the Found Footage Files Podcast this week, Sanchez revealed that the eventual release of an extended cut, edited together from all that never-before-seen content, is not entirely out of the question.
“During the original process of the editing of the film we started off with a 3 hour cut and then we trimmed it down to about 2.5 hours, and that was the first time we showed it to an audience,” Sanchez told the podcast. “We knew it was way too long. We knew we were going to have to cut at least an hour out of the movie. So we showed the movie and it was a good reaction. It was definitely too long, but that was really the first time where people had seen it like that and just kind of experienced this thing, which was a 2.5 hour version of Blair Witch.”
“I think unfortunately the 2.5-hour version that we screened originally we haven’t been able to find anywhere,” he continued. “That’s just what happens when you have to reuse Beta SP tapes because you have no money. We’d have to go back and figure out where the files are and all that stuff. And it would be a nightmare. But yeah, I think in a couple of weeks I could probably take the original movie and edit a longer version if I wanted to. I know the fans are like ‘everybody wants to see it.’ It would be cool to do, honestly. I wouldn’t hesitate to do that if for some reason Lionsgate hired me to do that. I think it would a lot of fun.”
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Movies
‘Evil Dead’ Film Franchise Getting TWO New Installments
It was a risk for Fede Alvarez to reboot Sam Raimi’s horror classic The Evil Dead in 2013, but that risk paid off and so did its spiritual sequel Evil Dead Rise in 2023. Now Deadline is reporting that the series is getting, not one, but two fresh entries.
We already knew about the Sébastien Vaniček upcoming film that delves into the Deadite universe and should be a proper sequel to the latest film, but we are broadsided that Francis Galluppi and Ghost House Pictures are doing a one-off project set in Raimi’s universe based off of an idea that Galluppi pitched to Raimi himself. That concept is being kept under wraps.
“Francis Galluppi is a storyteller who knows when to keep us waiting in simmering tension and when to hit us with explosive violence,” Raimi told Deadline. “He is a director that shows uncommon control in his feature debut.”
That feature is titled The Last Stop In Yuma County which will release theatrically in the United States on May 4. It follows a traveling salesman, “stranded at a rural Arizona rest stop,” and “is thrust into a dire hostage situation by the arrival of two bank robbers with no qualms about using cruelty-or cold, hard steel-to protect their bloodstained fortune.”
Galluppi is an award-winning sci-fi/horror shorts director whose acclaimed works include High Desert Hell and The Gemini Project. You can view the full edit of High Desert Hell and the teaser for Gemini below:
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Movies
‘Invisible Man 2’ Is “Closer Than Its Ever Been” to Happening
Elisabeth Moss in a very well-thought-out statement said in an interview for Happy Sad Confused that even though there have been some logistical issues for doing Invisible Man 2 there is hope on the horizon.
Podcast host Josh Horowitz asked about the follow-up and if Moss and director Leigh Whannell were any closer to cracking a solution to getting it made. “We are closer than we have ever been to cracking it,” said Moss with a huge grin. You can see her reaction at the 35:52 mark in the below video.
Whannell is currently in New Zealand filming another monster movie for Universal, Wolf Man, which might be the spark that ignites Universal’s troubled Dark Universe concept which hasn’t gained any momentum since Tom Cruise’s failed attempt at resurrecting The Mummy.
Also, in the podcast video, Moss says she is not in the Wolf Man film so any speculation that it’s a crossover project is left in the air.
Meanwhile, Universal Studios is in the middle of constructing a year-round haunt house in Las Vegas which will showcase some of their classic cinematic monsters. Depending on attendance, this could be the boost the studio needs to get audiences interested in their creature IPs once more and to get more films made based on them.
The Las Vegas project is set to open in 2025, coinciding with their new proper theme park in Orlando called Epic Universe.
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News
Jake Gyllenhaal’s Thriller ‘Presumed Innocent’ Series Gets Early Release Date
Jake Gyllenhaal’s limited series Presumed Innocent is dropping on AppleTV+ on June 12 instead of June 14 as originally planned. The star, whose Road House reboot has brought mixed reviews on Amazon Prime, is embracing the small screen for the first time since his appearance on Homicide: Life on the Street in 1994.
Presumed Innocent is being produced by David E. Kelley, J.J. Abrams’ Bad Robot, and Warner Bros. It is an adaptation of Scott Turow’s 1990 film in which Harrison Ford plays a lawyer doing double duty as an investigator looking for the murderer of his colleague.
These types of sexy thrillers were popular in the ’90s and usually contained twist endings. Here’s the trailer for the original:
According to Deadline, Presumed Innocent doesn’t stray far from the source material: “…the Presumed Innocent series will explore obsession, sex, politics and the power and limits of love as the accused fights to hold his family and marriage together.”
Up next for Gyllenhaal is the Guy Ritchie action movie titled In the Grey scheduled for release in January 2025.
Presumed Innocent is an eight-episode limited series set to stream on AppleTV+ starting June 12.
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