There's still time for a prequel.
So you never know.
Most people gave up hope for BW3
and look what happened: 9•16•16
With Haxan having gone back and forth with Lions Gate over the years, debating prequel vs. sequel / sequel vs. prequel has been maddening. It's LG's property, and they could make a decision without anyone else knowing. For as long as I can recall, their desire for a sequel or series of sequels has been based on three points. One, they claim they're marketing research concluded that the audience preferred a sequel (this, I disagree with. I'm not privy to their market research, but I am the front line fella who has long taken the temperature of the real audience. Though "unofficially" of course, but I'm the one who fields all the email and inquiries in addition to websites, message boards and social media, and it's 90% in favor of a prequel, be it Elly, be it Rustin, et al. That's a fact, not wishful thinking. So I'm in complete disagreement with any "market research" in regards to the core Blair Witch fans. Two, they claim period films do not appeal to mass audience overall. Where that statistic comes from I am utterly clueless. And third, which I can agree with, is that period films are very expensive to produce. Jack up the budget at least twice, if not three-fold to shoot a period film. Sop in that regard I can understand LG's reluctance. It's as huge risk to take of a concept that is already risky to consider.
Though the Elly Kedward site is a Proof-of-Concept Experiment (long since based on a treatment from as early as 2001), there's been recent talk of it "lighting a fire under their arse." That could be a good thing. It could also be a catastrophe, depending on how it's received.
The original treatment (bullet points) was composed for two reasons. One, personal artistic satisfaction, i.e. simply the desire to do so. And two, because if a prequel was to made, and there was loose talk of of it in the early 2000's, that prequel would have involved Burkittsville in the 1780's and 1790's), the treatment could be included on the Blair site as a backstory.
My desire since day one was to explore more of who Elly was herself as a person, of what led up to her emigrating to America, to look beyond the campfire ghost-stories of the Blair Witch. In the Trial of Elly Kedward, neither words "Blair" or "Witch" appear. Intentionally.
Despite all that has been speculated and debated in the mythology since The Blair Witch Project was released, the one fact that does remain is there was indeed a woman named Elly Kedward, and she was indeed accused of witchcraft and left for dead in the middle of winter. Since and now all those tragedies have been locally blamed on Elly Kedward, aka the “Blair Witch” in speculation, debate and sometimes outright belief, whether true or not.
The greatest fact of all however, which cannot be disputed, is that prior to her death, Elly Kedward was indeed mortal. She was a woman who breathed the same air as we all do, she walked the same earth as we all do, she ate from the same fruits as we all do. She laughed the same as we all do, she cried the same as we all do and she bled the same as we all do. She had a heartbeat, she had a face, she had thoughts and dreams just like any mortal human being.
Granting all that has been discussed and debated in 200 plus years, at one time there was no Elly Kedward in Blair, Maryland, and there was a time there was no Elly Kedward in Ireland.
For as one who breathed the same air as we do and walked the same earth as we do, she was also conceived and born as we all were. She was an infant as were all were.
What is it that has an innocent mortal infant grow up as a mortal young girl, to become a mortal young woman, then to age into a mortal old woman, then only to be known or become someone, or something, immortal? One that haunts the woods of the Black Hills forest to this very day?
Therein was my personal motivation. To better understand the witch, one must first understand who she was.
That treatment has sat on my hard drive for 17+ years. A couple of years ago, when I was working on the 2016 launch of the Blair site, I thought it time to pull it out this old treatment of mine, dust it off, and see how our girl was doing.
...She was lonely.
Thus, I decided to expand the bullet points and pull together the full story in a narrative form.
...Until Bill Barnes died. And that changed everything. Having discovered that he had been in possession of a journal, a diary written in Elly Kedward's own hand, blew it up completely. The fact that a diary existed at all, the fact he was in possession of it, the fact he never revealed he was in possession of it, rose so many questions that will take years to answer, if at all (the man is deceased after all).
But now Elly could tell her own story. Thus, the launch of ellykedward.com as it is today. A series narrative of her journal in her own words presented as a proof-of-concept experiment to visually and aurally represent those entries.
So as Sticks•n•Stones commented nearly 2 years ago: "So you never know."
That's absolutely correct. When you least expect it.
(This is an old thread, and I noticed there are several threads with the same title, perhaps they could be merged?)
