'The Blair Witch Project': Rhymes with Rich

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So strong is the identity of the website — which is averaging 2 million hits a day — that the film's official T-shirts are emblazoned with www.blairwitch.com across the back. "I think this is the first time that the Web has been the most basic and important tool in getting to a movie's audience," says Malin. "Our demographic is 16 to 24, which is exactly the demo that goes online." And watches television: Further feeding the frenzy was Curse of the Blair Witch, a special co-funded by Artisan and the Sci-Fi Channel that aired four days before the film's opening.

Artisan's innovative release plan was the second half of the company's shrewd strategy. Instead of opening the film in New York and L.A. and then expanding it across the country, Artisan determined that the best way to build buzz was to release the film in 24 markets on 27 screens. "We want to make it a hard ticket," says Malin. "We want people to go to the theaters and have it be sold out. In this summer's cluster of movies, we want to make our picture an event." The plan worked. "It was a madhouse. Lots of crowds, lots of disgruntled people because they couldn't get tickets," says John Luis, an employee at L.A.'s Landmark Nuart Theatre, which even scrapped its routine midnight showing of The Rocky Horror Picture Show to add Blair screenings. As of July 19, Blair Witch had averaged an astonishing $56,002 per screen, grossing $1.6 million without the benefit of a single television advertisement.

The blockbuster numbers bode well not only for the film, which will be in about 800 theaters on July 30, and the filmmakers, whose next project is a comedy for Artisan entitled Heart of Love, but for Artisan itself. In the last two years, the company has earned a place alongside Sony Pictures Classics, Lions Gate, October (now USA Films), and Miramax as a home for eccentric and arty fare with breakout potential. This year alone, Artisan will release Steven Soderbergh's The Limey and Atom Egoyan's Felicia's Journey, both of which played in Cannes, as well as a couple of self-financed productions: the reported $33 million thriller The Ninth Gate, directed by Roman Polanski and starring Johnny Depp, and David Koepp's Stir of Echoes, starring Kevin Bacon.

While The Ninth Gate cost more than Artisan plans to spend on most projects, the budget was no hardship: Thanks to the performance of films like Jet Li's import Black Mask, which has earned more than $12 million in 10 weeks and for which Artisan paid nothing up front, and a massive video library acquired from companies like Carolco and Hallmark, Artisan now has annual revenues of nearly $300 million. "When we bought it two years ago, the company was losing $9 million," says Malin. "This year, we will have a cash flow of over $30 million. We wanted to hold out to filmmakers that we can market, distribute, and promote. That was our strategy, and now we're executing it."

Emphasize that promotion bit: Anticipating that Blair Witch the movie won't sate fans' appetites, Artisan has arranged for a comic book, released by Oni Press, and a trade paperback called The Blair Witch Dossier. Then there's Artisan's capability to launch the film massively on video through its distribution arm and the company's exclusive deal with Showtime television. And that, the studio hopes, should be enough to hold audiences' interest while it contemplates another project — Blair Witch Project: The Sequel.

(Additional reporting by Cheryl Klein)