Blair Witch supposedly bombed at the box office this weekend. We’re not sure if it’s because the competition in the horror genre has been fierce lately or if it’s just because the found footage genre is totally over. Has anyone really thought about Blair Witch much since 1999?
Either way, the media has slammed the sequel that no one asked for, but the filmmakers aren’t sweating it.
Following the movie’s negative response, screenwriter Simon Barrett and director Adam Wingard shared a hilarious exchange of tweets.
https://twitter.com/AdamWingard/status/777552291939229696
In the exchange, Wingard takes a small jab at Clint Eastwood’s Sully, which won the weekend at box office.
Of course, while Blair Witch looks like a major flop compared to a massive Hollywood film like Sully, it actually isn’t a flop at all. Critics may have given the film poor reviews, and it only pulled in a 36% score on Rotten Tomatoes and a 46% rating on Metacritic, but the average, moderately successful horror film is typically reviewed pretty poorly on those sites.
In addition, Blair Witch only cost $5 million to make and pulled in $14.5 million worldwide. That means it almost tripled its budget in a matter of days. The film was barely marketed, announcing only that it existed at Comi-Con a few weeks before the release, so was it really a failure?
Regardless of what critics say, Wingard and Barrett seem to take it all with a grain of salt.
