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"We could have said in July, 'Let's go with Blair Witch 2; we don't give a s--- what it is. Slap it together for $4 million and cash in,'" says Malin, sitting in his downtown Manhattan office underneath a framed copy of Variety that screams 'WITCH' BREWS BIG B.O. "But that would have ended the franchise." It didn't help that Blair Witch cowriter-directors Eduardo Sanchez and Daniel Myrick told Artisan that they were interested only in doing the third film in the series--envisioned as a prequel--and would make a Monty Pythonesque comedy, Heart of Love, next. (The pair, who receive executive producing credit on Book of Shadows, declined to be interviewed for this article.)

By September, Artisan started shaking tents around town, commissioning script ideas from relatively unknown--and presumably inexpensive--writers Jon Bokenkamp, Neal Stevens, and Robert Parigi. Meanwhile, Joe Berlinger--who, with Bruce Sinofsky, had made the critically acclaimed documentaries Brother's Keeper (1992), Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills (1996), and Revelations: Paradise Lost 2 (2000)--was trying to persuade Artisan to finance his first fiction film, a noir thriller set in the '30s. Listening to the pitch from Berlinger--described by cast member Stephen Barker Turner as "one dark dude" who "looks [like] a Fraggle Rock Muppet"--execs began to think they'd found the perfect guy to entrust with their franchise.

"All of a sudden I realized we weren't talking about my movie anymore," remembers the 37-year-old director, interrupted by screams from the adjacent studio, where engineers are adjusting Book of Shadows' sound mix. "Was I dying to make the sequel? Absolutely not. I wasn't even sure a sequel could or should be made. But I'd been banging my head against the Hollywood wall and I said yes."

Berlinger promptly scrapped the early script drafts--which had news crews tracking the original kids or Donahue's relatives searching for her remains--in favor of a more radical approach. "I was fascinated that people were hoodwinked, that they actually emerged from the theater still convinced it was real," he says. "I wanted to make a sequel to the phenomenon, not to the movie."

So his two-page outline submitted on Dec. 1 showcased a postmodern twist, acknowledging the original film as a work of fiction. The sequel is a supposed re-creation of real events that occurred following the release of The Blair Witch Project. In other words, instead of pretending that Heather, Josh, and Mike were real people who disappeared in the woods, the movie follows obsessed fans who believe they may have been real people who disappeared in the woods (or, at the very least, are willing to pretend they believe to cash in on the sensation). Led by a local of questionable sanity, the quintet head into the cursed Black Hills for a tour, only to spiral into paranoia, mystical terror, and murder.

Got that?

The studio did, and within two weeks had greenlit the project and begun pushing for a 2000 release. Berlinger enlisted Dick Beebe (House on Haunted Hill) to work on the screenplay while he looked for a cast. "God, it was f---in' tense," remembers Beebe, who tapped out more than 20 drafts with Berlinger. "I got my first draft in one day late. And [the studio] was like, Omigod! This...is...unacceptable, and I was like, it's just one day. Jesus."

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