Whether you love it or loathe it, the ending to The Blair Witch Project is still discussed to this day, but it almost didn't conclude the way it did. As part of their "Untold Stories" issue, Entertainment Weekly talked with The Blair Witch Project directors Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez about one of the film's alternate endings [spoiler warning for those who haven't seen the film].

Speaking with EW, Myrick and Sánchez said that they came up with the film's ending—with Mike facing the corner, and Heather yelling and dropping her camera in the basement of an isolated house that they entered in search of Josh—only three days before filming it.

Although effective in creeping people out at its test screening, Artisan, the film's distributor, desired a less ambiguous conclusion, so Myrick and Sanchez returned to the woods to film more endings, one of which featured "Mike hanging from a noose, crucified on a wooden stick man, and with a bloodied chest," according to EW.

You can see that particular alternate ending depicted in the artwork below, created by Tim McDonagh for EW. Here's what Myrick had to say about the additional shooting:

“We went back to that house with a skeleton crew and basically just shot all the endings that Ed and I threw out when we were dreaming up the script."

Despite the additional footage (which included another interview in which a local talks about Rustin Parr's "stare at the wall" method used on his victims, tying into Mike's behavior at the end of the movie), Artisan executives eventually agreed that the original ending was the way to go, showing less but leaving more to the imagination for decades to come.

To read more about EW's "Untold Stories" portion on The Blair Witch Project, visit them online.

Artwork by Tim McDonagh for EW:

Source: EW
  • Derek Anderson
    About the Author - Derek Anderson

    Raised on a steady diet of R.L. Stine’s Goosebumps books and Are You Afraid of the Dark?, Derek has been fascinated with fear since he first saw ForeverWare being used on an episode of Eerie, Indiana.

    When he’s not writing about horror as the Senior News Reporter for Daily Dead, Derek can be found daydreaming about the Santa Carla Boardwalk from The Lost Boys or reading Stephen King and Brian Keene novels.