For its stars, the true horror of The Blair Witch Project is getting paid
The three stars of The Blair Witch Project, who also shot and improvised the whole movie, are still getting screwed
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Photo: Lauren Film
The Blair Witch Project is one of the most successful independent films ever made, grossing over $100 million on a $35,000 budget. One of the reasons the movie came with such a low price tag is its conceit: A found footage horror movie shot by the victims of Blair’s witchcraft. The cast, consisting primarily of three young, inexperienced actors hoping to break into the industry—Heather Donahue, Michael C. Williams, and Joshua Leonard—also shot the picture and captured sound. What they didn’t get was paid. In a new interview with Variety, Donahue, Leonard, and Williams reveal the extent to how much Lionsgate (née Artisan) didn’t want to pay them.
The three actors were in their early 20s when they shot The Blair Witch Project, a movie they thought would go nowhere when they signed a contract with Haxan Films, a production company founded by the film’s writer-directors, Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez, and its producers, Gregg Hale, Robin Cowie, and Michael Monello. Should the film gross more than $1 million, the actors were entitled to 1% of the profits. Williams remembers thinking, “Wouldn’t that be ridiculous?” They didn’t even know the Blair Witch Project would be an entire movie, not the short film they expected for their acting reels, until a year after production wrapped.
Of course, the ridiculous thing happened: the movie grossed well over $1 million, and the things that didn’t bother them at the start of production began to wear. The fact that the movie used their real names meant Artisan required them to hide from public view during the film’s initial “are they dead?” viral marketing campaign. They couldn’t take acting jobs or even talk to the press about how little money they were making. A random character wasn’t the subject of a sexist backlash. Karen Donahue was, and because she shares a name with her character, all the insults were directed at her. “It was relentless,” Donahue says. “Just that feeling of ‘Wow, this is definitely not what I signed up for, and I have no money to protect myself from the onslaught.’”
Artisan, its successor, Lionsgate, and now Blumhouse, have all used their likeness and names for marketing and narrative, using their story from the first movie as a jumping-off point for other sequels. Meanwhile, Blair Witch continued to make money. In the mid-2000s, the trio sued Artisan and received a $300,000 settlement as investors continued to bring in millions. When Lionsgate attempted to use her name for the 2016 sequel, Donahue invoked the settlement, prohibiting the studio from using her last name and likeness. Williams was game, though. At the time, he and his family were living in a one-bedroom because their home was destroyed in a flood.
“I’m embarrassed that I let this happen to me,” Williams told Variety. “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.”
It doesn’t look like their issues with the film are fully exorcized. Announced last month, a new Blair Witch reboot from one of horror’s most successful imprints, Blumhouse, is on the way, and they’re already using the original cast’s likeness to sell it.
“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,” Williams says. “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.”
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It’s Heather Donahue, not Karen. No wonder she’s not getting paid, not even entertainment writers know who she is.
The Razzies know who she is.
It’s not unusual for actors to be abused, nor is it unusual for promises of a share of the profits to come to nothing due to shady accounting practices, nor is it unusual for non-union contracts to include rights to the actors’ names and likenesses in perpetuity, but this really stood out to me from the Variety article:>>“Artisan Entertainment, which acquired the film at Sundance for $1.1 million, took maintaining that illusion so seriously that the actors were barred from appearing at its Cannes Film Festival premiere that May. Donahue had hired a publicist, who was then prohibited from booking interviews. After Leonard was cast in an independent film, he was admonished: He wasn’t supposed to reveal that he was an actor, let alone that he was alive.”I really want to know if this was in the original contract or was something the actors agreed to or were compensated for later, because it seems like a bizarre requirement for any project, much less one with an uncertain distribution future. How long were they expected to play dead?But then I still have trouble wrapping my head around the fact that people not only believed it was a true story but were eager to watch what would have basically been a snuff film.>>“Instead, to commemorate the film breaking $100 million at the domestic box office, Artisan sent each actor a fruit basket.”Maybe some boneheaded administrator thought this was a nice gesture, but it kind of seems like deliberate humiliation.>>“I’m embarrassed that I let this happen to me,” Williams says…. “You’ve got to put that stuff away, because you’re a fucking loser if you can’t… Hopefully, we will help somebody to see: Don’t do what we did.”What’s sad about this is there will always be actors willing to let themselves be abused like this, and I don’t think they should be shamed for doing so. It would be easy to say don’t do non-union films or don’t sign contracts that don’t guarantee fair compensation, but the odds are so stacked against any actor that doesn’t look like an underwear model or have family connections (and the potential rewards for success so great) that it’s inevitable that people will take desperate chances.
This. It seems really difficult for some people to wrap their heads around how creatives love what they do so much, many are just happy to be able to do it at all, much less be compensated for it, and how that can push artists to undervalue their skills and talent. It’s easy to say all these years later, “wElL yOu ShOuLDnT hAVe sIGnEd a cONTrAct” as if 1) it’s at all reasonable for these folks to have imagined everything that happened afterwards and 2) like rich people don’t sue companies and other rich people to get out of unfair contracts.
I think I remember reading somewhere that in order for actors to even join a the Screen Actor’s Guild they’ve got to work in the industry for at least 30 days. But also there is some merit/point system. I might be getting the Writer’s Guild and the Actor’s Guild guidelines crossed but I don’t think they can start from the get go in the guild if they haven’t met the requirements for doing so first. There’s that bar to entry which must be passed.
This just highlights the shady AF accounting surrounding the movie business. And it’s not new, for decades studios have claimed that movies that made a 100% ROI on the budget/marketing, the later of which often equals the entire budget of making the film, are still money losers, which is utter BS.
Did I miss something? Was the 1% part of their contracts or not?No amount of Hollywood accounting can make that much profit vanish.