Two of original film’s trinity of leads, Joshua Leonard and Michael C. Williams, will serve as executive producers after a yearslong battle against Lionsgate.

Original Blair Witch stars, directors join reboot after slamming studio for ‘25 years of disrespect’

Two of original film's trinity of leads, Joshua Leonard and Michael C. Williams, will serve as executive producers after a yearslong battle against Lionsgate.

By Ryan Coleman

Ryan Coleman

Ryan Coleman is a news writer for with previous work in MUBI Notebook, Slant, and the LA Review of Books.

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on May 1, 2026 2:33 p.m. ET

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Joshua Leonard and Michael C. Williams in 'The Blair Witch Project' (1999). Credit:

- Lionsgate announced Thursday that original *Blair Witch Project* directors Eduardo Sánchez and Daniel Myrick and stars Joshua Leonard and Michael C. Williams have joined an upcoming reboot as executive producers.

- They join the project after a years-long battle against the studio by the actors.

- Leonard, Williams, and Rei Hance, previously known as Heather Donahue, had accused the studio of "reprehensible" exploitation of their involvement.

*The Blair Witch Project**'*s original family is (almost) back together again, after years of acrimony.

Directors Eduardo Sánchez and Daniel Myrick, producer Gregg Hale, as well as stars Joshua Leonard and Michael C. Williams, have officially boarded Lionsgate's upcoming reboot of the 1999 horror classic as executive producers, per an announcement shared with ** on Thursday.

Excepting one crucial third of the original cast triumvirate — Rei Hance, formerly known as Heather Donahue — the *Blair Witch* team appears to have patched up a protracted row that the original stars had with Lionsgate, which Leonard once accused of "reprehensible" exploitation.

Joshua Leonard, Rei Hance, and Michael C. Williams at the MTV Video Music Awards in 1999.

Ron Galella, Ltd./Ron Galella Collection via Getty

Lionsgate and Blumhouse-Atomic Monster, the recently conglomerated hub formed by Jason Blum and James Wan's production companies, celebrated Sánchez, Myrick, Hale, Leonard, and Williams' involvement as "bringing the full mythology and legacy of the franchise to a new generation of storytelling."

Thursday's announcement also named the long-gestating reboot's director — Dylan Clark, a popular horror creator on YouTube who recently signed with Universal to adapt his horror short "Portrait of God." That forthcoming feature will be produced by an all-star team including Sam Raimi and Jordan Peele.

Chris Devlin wrote the screenplay for the as-yet untitled "new imagining" of *The* *Blair Witch Project*, with a rewrite from Clark. Devlin previously penned the 2022 *Texas Chain Saw Massacre *reboot, as well as the 2023 horror film *Cobweb*.

Original 'Blair Witch' star blasts '25 years of disrespect' amid reboot news

'The Blair Witch Project' 10 years later: Catching up with the directors of the horror sensation

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*The Blair Witch Project *became a creative and commercial phenomenon when it opened theatrically in the summer of 1999. The micro-budget, formally experimental, deep-woods thriller contained no ghosts or ghouls, no vampires or werewolves, really nothing but three scared teenagers wandering in the woods for two hours. Yet it grossed nearly $250 million at the global box office.

But as the years passed, and as Hollywood did what it does best — endlessly proliferate *Blair Witch*'s IP into sequels, books, comics, video games, and merchandise — the film's cast began to speak up.

The original film was distributed in the U.S. by Artisan Entertainment, which merged in 2003 with Lions Gate Entertainment to become the mini-major studio known simply today as Lionsgate. In a 2015 oral history of the film for *The Week*, the *Blair Witch*'s stars and directors painted a picture of creative differences that led to a rushed sequel, 2000's *Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2.*

They eventually lost control of the franchise, or as Sánchez put it, "We lost our innocence." Leonard noted, "I think some people might be a little bitter about the experience. I will say that we had what I have discovered was an incredibly classless experience with Artisan."

Those feelings only deepened as the *Blair Witch *machine kept pumping out products, largely without their input, or to their benefit. Leonard released a blistering public statement in 2024 when Lionsgate announced a reboot of the original film, without any of its core creative team involved.

"At this point, it's 25 years of disrespect from the folks who've pocketed the lion's share (pun intended) of the profits from OUR work, and that feels both icky and classless," he wrote on Facebook. All three cast members spoke to *Variety** *that same year, where Hance claimed they'd been "cut out of something that we were intimately involved with creating," and Leonard said Lionsgate's "behavior has been reprehensible."

A spokesperson for Lionsgate told ** the company had no comment on the past dispute. Rance did not immediately respond to EW's request for comment. A source with knowledge of the situation told EW that Rance declined to participate in the new film.

The next chapter in the *Blair Witch Project *franchise does not yet have an official release date.

[*This article has been with a response from Lionsgate.*]

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