All figures are in millions of US Dollars. It includes the foreign and domestic box office gross.

The history sounds as a horror movie of Hollywood. It was like this: in January of 1999, two young film directors entered in the jungle well dressed of Park City, Utah, where the Festival of Movies of Sundance was happening, looking for a distribution agreement for a studio. In fact, after a session at midnight of their granulated film, made with only US$ 30,000, the filmakers, Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez found the such agreement - a contract of US$1,1 million that ended up being worth to their film amazed critics, international distribution and something as US$ 250 million in box offices.

The film in subject was Blair Witch Project, and it ended up turning the largest success of the independent movies: cheap, modern and tremendously lucrative. The witch left Myrick and Sanchez rich and relatively famous.Until the moment in that they simply disappeared of the map.

It can be the effect of the witch's curse, or, who knows, a simple case of deception of expectations in the second work, but the fact is that Myrick and Sanchez still didn't make another film.

But the curse is not limited to the creative part of the responsible group of Blair Witch Project. Last month, Artisan Entertainment, the firm that bought and it distributed the film, it was bought by a larger and more successful rival, Lions Gate Entertainment, for US$ 160 million more about of US$ 45 million that Artisan had of accumulated debt. Nor actors Heather Donahue, Joshua Leonard and Michael C. Williams got to transform their immediate celebrity in more significant careers.

It is a situation that especially collides when it is taken into account the enormous hype that it surrounded the premiere of Blair Witch Project, a frisson that was created in great measure with the help of a promotion for the internet that made - the people imagine that the film was a amateur documentary video found by chance, done by three students devoured by a witch in a forest in Maryland.

The outline promocional created by Artisan and for the producer, Haxan Films, generated a great expectation around the movie, especially between the young public and lover of horror films.
Although nor all the reviews were positive, most of the critics was impressed with the capacity of the creators of the film to use an aesthetics of low budget, with camera in irregular movement, scenes in black and white in 16mm and frightening illustrations.

Although Haxan and their investors had won near US$ 40 million with Blair Witch Project, nor Myrick nor Sanchez said to be interested in doing a sequence immediately. Artisan didn't like the reluctance of Haxan in producing a sequence. In January of 2000, Amir Malin, his old executive-boss, had said that movie would not just have a sequence, but two.

One year later Artisan threw BWP 2: The Book of the Shadows, with a new director (Joe Berlinger), new cast and, which more called the attention, a budget worthy of any studio work (US$ 15 million, unassuming the marketing expenses and promotion). But the ray didn't want to fall twice in the same place: the new film just collected US$ 26 million. Myrick and Sanchez took the credit of executive producers, but they contributed a little.

The sequence was just the first of several deceptions of Artisan. Founded in 1997 by Malin and Bill Block, it was a small company and respected, known by investing in films of low budget. After Blair Witch Project, the company became burdened by a big team of professionals and for mistaken artistic decisions. In the end of 2000 the debt already arrived the US$ 260 million, it calculates that Malin got to lower for US$ 45 million when the company was sold.

In february Sanchez and Hale met with executives of Lions Gate, buyer of Artisan, to propose new ideas in order to rejuvenate the franchise, among them a film telling the previous history, to be adapted in the 1940s, other still previous, in the century XVIII, and a sequence.

Good luck, boys!