<Tr> <Th> Budget </Th> <Td> $60,000 </Td> </Tr> <Tr> <Th> Box office </Th> <Td> $248.6 million </Td> </Tr> <P> The Blair Witch Project is a 1999 American psychological horror film written, directed, and edited by Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez . It tells the fictional story of three student filmmakers (Heather Donahue, Michael C. Williams, and Joshua Leonard) who hike in the Black Hills near Burkittsville, Maryland, in 1994 to film a documentary about a local legend known as the Blair Witch . The three disappear, but their video and sound equipment (along with most of the footage they shot) is discovered a year later; the "recovered footage" is the film the viewer is watching . </P> <P> Myrick and Sánchez conceived of a fictional legend of the Blair Witch in 1993 . They developed a thirty - five page screenplay with the dialogue to be improvised . A casting call advertisement in Backstage magazine was prepared by the directors and Donahue, Williams, and Leonard were cast . The film entered production in October 1997, with the principal photography taking place in Maryland for eight days . About twenty hours of footage was shot and was edited down to eighty - two minutes . </P>

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