The three actors who became horror legends under their own real names are coming back together in Albany this Sunday, watching The Blair Witch Project with an audience for the first time since the film upended moviemaking in 1999. Heather Donahue, Joshua Leonard and Michael C. Williams will appear on stage after a full screening at The Egg, marking the trio's first joint Q&A directly following a theater showing of the film that made them famous and, for a while, made people believe they were actually missing.
A Screening 27 Years in the Making
The event at The Egg, located at 1 Empire Plaza in Albany, is scheduled for Sunday, with doors opening at 7 p.m. and the screening beginning at 8 p.m., according to News10. Tickets run between $47.63 and $59.16. The conversation afterward will be moderated by Daysia Leneé Hiller of Youth FX, who the venue describes, per The Egg, as leading the discussion following the screening. Hiller serves as lead educator and creative producer at the Albany-based youth media organization.
A Historic Venue and Local Youth Media
The setting is a longstanding part of Albany’s public events landscape: according to The Egg, construction of the performing-arts venue began in 1966 and was completed in 1978. The discussion’s moderator, Daysia Leneé Hiller, represents Youth FX, which says it is based in Albany’s South End and works with young people through training and engagement in digital media.
According to the Times Union, this will be the first time the original cast has watched the film together since 1999, and it also marks their first Q&A held directly after a screening. Williams told the outlet that discussing the movie remains humbling 27 years later, and that the trio's use of their real names led audiences and the press to treat them almost like reality television stars rather than actors playing roles.
How a Hands-Off Approach Birthed a Phenomenon
The Blair Witch Project follows three student filmmakers who vanish in the woods while shooting a documentary about a local legend, as The Hollywood Reporter describes it. Directors Eduardo Sánchez and Daniel Myrick took a notably hands-off approach, per the Times Union, giving the cast loose story points and dropping them into the woods to improvise from there. Variety reports the directors trained the actors to operate their own cameras and sound equipment before sending them off with story prompts from which they built the entire film.
The Times Union also reported that cast members used safe words during filming to distinguish their characters from themselves, a practical response to a production built around improvisation.
A Marketing Campaign That Fooled the Internet
The film's success wasn't just about what happened in the woods. Haxan Films launched a marketing website before the movie even reached Sundance, and it drew roughly 100,000 views before anyone had seen the film, according to the Los Angeles Times. Within weeks, that site was racking up 3 million hits a day. The campaign presented the film as a true incident, complete with faux missing-person reports and low-budget newsreel-style investigation footage, and the three lead actors were listed as missing and presumed dead on IMDb, per the Times Union.
Artisan Entertainment purchased distribution rights to the film, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 1999 before opening in just 27 theaters and eventually expanding to more than 2,000, the Los Angeles Times reports. Production budget estimates vary between sources: the Los Angeles Times puts it at roughly $60,000, while The Hollywood Reporter cites $35,000 before marketing costs. The film went on to earn nearly $250 million worldwide, figures that different outlets have also cited as $248 million. The actors reportedly weren't allowed to attend press junkets until more than a month after the film's release, a period when the public was still unsure whether what they'd seen was fiction.
Residuals, a Lawsuit, and an Open Letter
That blurred-reality marketing success didn't translate into financial windfalls for the cast. Variety reports that the actors' original 1997 deal memo entitled them to just a one percent participation in profits above $1 million. In 2024, the three lead actors released an open letter to Lionsgate requesting what Variety described as meaningful consultation on future Blair Witch projects, and the Times Union notes the actors later filed a lawsuit over fair compensation that has since settled.
Despite the franchise’s compensation dispute, Williams has described his relationship with it as positive, according to the Times Union. He has also framed the upcoming installment as a project that should appeal to longtime fans and newcomers.
What's Next for the Franchise
Lionsgate has scheduled a new Blair Witch film for Sept. 24, 2027, according to Variety. Dylan Clark, who previously directed Transfigure and Portrait of God, is directing the new film from a script by Chris Thomas Devlin. The Times Union describes the project as a pseudo-sequel backed by Lionsgate, Atomic Monster and Blumhouse.
Executive producers on the new film include original creators Eduardo Sánchez, Daniel Myrick and Gregg Hale, along with original cast members Joshua Leonard and Michael C. Williams, Variety reports. Plot details have not been revealed. The film joins a franchise that already includes the 2000 sequel Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2, which grossed $48 million, and a 2016 film titled Blair Witch that brought in $45 million against a $5 million budget, according to TheWrap.
The original film's influence has stretched well beyond its own sequels. Its raw, handheld approach helped pioneer a new subgenre of moviemaking, according to the Lexington Herald-Leader, and later films including Cloverfield, Paranormal Activity and The Last Exorcism borrowed its found-footage concept, per the Los Angeles Times. Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh, where the film's archive has joined the school's Horror Studies Collection, have pointed to it as proof that viral internet marketing could work alongside traditional promotion. The university's Pittwire reports that the collection includes promotional items such as missing-person posters, as well as production materials. For the three actors returning to the stage together in Albany, that legacy is still something they're working out in real time, nearly three decades after the cameras first rolled in those Maryland woods.
