But Myrick and Sanchez and their distributors at Artisan Entertainment (later Lionsgate) - who picked up Blair Witch for about $1 million at Sundance - cannily realized that they could use both the Internet’s strengths and weaknesses to their advantage. This wouldn’t necessarily seem like the most fertile ground to launch an innovative movie promotion. Most people used dial-up services to get online, a slow and unreliable process that made accessing audio difficult and video a technical nightmare.īlogging was available but essentially unknown - the term was only coined that year - and many people regarded the net and the World Wide Web with a combination of fascination and suspicion. Recall that in 1999, there was no Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest or any other form of social media as we now know and use it.
It also rewrote the book on movie promotion, pointed to the Internet’s social media future, created the now ubiquitous “found footage” genre and forced everybody to rethink not only the definition of blockbuster but also the truth-telling mandate of documentaries.Īrguably, the most significant effect of The Blair Witch Project was in demonstrating the marketing power of the Internet, which up to that point was seen largely as a geek’s playground. But that was on a production budget of $33 million, or about 1,100 times what it cost to make Blair Witch.īlair Witch’s awesome return on the dollar was just part of its almost supernatural success and influence. To put this into perspective, the Mike Myers spy parody Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me, released the same summer with massive promotion, earned $312 million globally.
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