In the summer of 1999, “The Blair Witch Project” became an inescapable cultural phenomenon. The independent film starred Heather Donahue, Michael C. Williams, and Joshua Leonard. Despite being in one of the most profitable films ever that launched an entire horror sub-genre, the cast were barely scraping by financially.
25 years later, it seems that very little has changed in terms of them being compensated for their work.
Casting Call & Contract
In August 1997, writer-directors Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez placed an open call in Backstage under the working title, “The Black Hills Project,” via their Haxan Films production banner. The duo co-founded the company with producers Gregg Hale, Robin Cowie, and Michael Monello. The ad for actors offered “pay, travel and meals,” with the pay being $500 per week. Donahue, Williams, and Leonard jumped at the chance only to be baptized by fire in ways no one saw coming.
Haxan had them sign a one-and-a-half-page deal memo, including a clause that said if the project nets Haxan over $1 million, the actors were entitled to “a one percent (1%) participation in profits in excess of $1,000,000.” A clause that, at the time, seemed laughable. This contract also stipulated that their real names could be used “for the purpose of this film.” Under the argument, their real names would make the dialoug feel more authentic.
All three 20-somethings were trained by Myrick and Sánchez to operate the cameras and sound equipment. Then they were dropped off in the woods with a series of story prompts and asked to improvise the rest. Their footage was supposed to comprise 10 minutes of a fictional documentary about their characters’ purported disappearance while searching for the fabled Blair Witch.
In the end, their footage made up almost the entire film.
A Surprise Success
After “The Blair Witch Project” took The Sundance Film Festival by storm, Artisan Entertainment bought it for $1.1 million. The company was very serious about maintaining the illusion that the film was real. So the cast was prevented from doing interviews and barred from the Cannes Film Festival premiere.
Leonard was cast in an independent film, for which he was admonished since he wasn’t supposed to reveal he was an actor, or even alive. At one point he even worked a catering job where he served food to his agent, days before he appeared on “The Tonight Show.”
“My agent asked me what the fuck I was doing,” Leonard says. “I said, ‘You know that I haven’t made any money.’ We were all struggling to pay the rent.”
Donahue was still working a temp job, and at one point her 1984 Toyota Celica broke down right underneath a billboard with her face on it. Williams’ boss didn’t understand why he was still moving furniture in Westchester, NY when he was on the cover of Newsweek.
Harassment
After the film was released the cast faced an onslaught of harassment from horror fans online. Given that the movie was one of the first to focus on internet marketing, it became a beckon for trolls. Trolls that were armed with their real names.
“Heather’s portrayal of a fierce and relentless artist who would not stop filming wasn’t an acceptable archetype at the time,” Leonard says. “She was fair game to be hated on, and they were using her real name.”
They put up with it, with the promise that all their hard work would soon be rewarded. That is until the $35,000 film broke $100 million at the domestic box office. Artisan sent each of them a fruit basket, that we are guessing wern’t worth 1% of $100 million.
“That was when it became clear that, wow, we were not going to get anything,” Donahue says. “We were being cut out of something that we were intimately involved with creating.”
Despite the studio basically forgetting about their performances, they couldn’t call them out at the time either. “I had an interview with The Philadelphia Inquirer where I said something like, I’m the poorest famous person in America right now,” said Donahue. “Artisan reached out to tell me I can’t say that.”
More “Blair Witch” to Come
On April 10th 2024, Lionsgate announced at CinemaCon that it was rebooting the film with Blumhouse. [In 2003, Lionsgate acquired Artisan giving them the right to “The Blair Witch Project.” ] The companies plan to “reintroduce this horror classic for a new generation,” explains studio chief Adam Fogelson.
Absolutely no one at the studios felt the need to give the origianal cast a heads-up that this was happening.
“I actually was looking forward to the 25th anniversary,” Donahue says. “We had booked a couple of conventions. It’s nice to hear nice things from the fans and see the guys. It was feeling very sweet for the first time in the whole history of this thing. And then — boom — comes this announcement, and it’s like, motherfuckers.”
On April 20th, the trio released an open letter to Lionsgate asking for “meaningful consultation” on any future “Blair Witch”-related projects that would likely result in the use of their names and faces. As well as, requesting retroactive and future residual payments for the movie “equivalent to the sum that would’ve been allotted through SAG-AFTRA, had we had proper union or legal representation when the film was made.”
A representative for SAG-AFTRA has contacted Lionsgate to assist and is “hopeful that the performers will achieve some compensation, but when there is no union contract covering the production, the actors and the union are generally limited to appealing to fairness.”
Corporations Vs Young Artists
Donahue, Williams, and Leonard recently interviewed with Variety, where they spoke about the abysmal treatment by the studios. “I’m embarrassed that I let this happen to me,” Williams said. “You’ve got to put that stuff away, because you’re a fucking loser if you can’t. Because everybody’s wondering what happened, and your wife is in the grocery line and she can’t pay because a check bounced. You’re in the most successful independent movie of all time, and you can’t take care of your loved ones.”
“I’m very grateful for what I have now and how fucking hard I fought to get it. But it still impacts me. I buried all this,” he adds. “Giant corporations don’t care that this happens to young artists. It’s bullshit. And that’s got to change somehow. Hopefully, we will help somebody to see: Don’t do what we did.”
Leonard is the only members of the cast to stay in the film business but is still willing to speak out. “I don’t need Lionsgate to like me,” he says. “I don’t care that they know that I think their behavior has been reprehensible. I don’t want my daughter to ever feel like anything is more valuable than her self-worth.”
In the summer of 1999, they all received a modest “performance bump” in the low five figures. But it didn’t help much considering that all of them were having difficulties finding work due to their deep connection with “The Blair Witch Project.”
Legal Battles
In October of 2000, right before the release of “Blair Witch 2: Book of Shadows,” they decided to sue Artisan. By February 2004, they arrived at about a $300,000 settlement that would be paid to each of them over several years.
The New York Times reported in 2004 that Haxan and its investors earned “an estimated $35 million to $40 million” from the film. It has now earned $248 million worldwide, significantly more than the $1 million clause in their contracts.
The directors and producers had their own legal battle resulting in an undisclosed settlement. Due to this agreement, they have not commented on the issue beyond a joint statement.
“25 years later, who would have thought we’d still be talking about ‘The Blair Witch Project,’ a film made by a group of total Hollywood outsiders? We’re hopeful Heather, Joshua and Mike find a satisfying conclusion to their conversations with Lionsgate. For us, this anniversary provides an exciting opportunity to celebrate the movie and its legacy with fans.”
Real Names
One of the victories in the settlement was Lionsgate “can’t use our names and images to make money for themselves anymore,” Leonard says.
“But they keep doing it anyway,” Donahue points out.
When the studio made the sequel, “Blair Witch” in 2016, it originally centered around Donahue’s fictional younger brother. She had to invoke the settlement and force them to remove her face and last name from the film. While she endorsed the film, she has walked away from the entertainment industry and wants to be a private citizen. “I didn’t want to be any part of it in any way whatsoever,” she says of the sequel. “I pushed back quite hard.”
She also had to go after Focus Features for using audio of her screams from “The Blair Witch Project” in the 2022 film “Tár.” Lionsgate pursued a settlement without her, so she had to find her own financial agreement.
Still Supporting “The Blair Witch Project”
Even with all of the drama, the trio remains proud of their work on the film. They just wish the studios would compensate them fairly for all the work they put in and the harassment they have endured.
“Is there value there or not?” Donahue says. “If there’s value, compensate us accordingly, and if there’s no value, then just stop using us.”
