How The Blair Witch Project Inspired Longlegs to Box Office Glory

Longlegs is already a box office smash. The Nicolas Cage horror film grossed $22.6 million (£17.4 million) in its opening weekend, easily beating the Scarlett Johansson and Channing Tatum rom-com Fly Me to the Moon. Naturally, both films lost out to Minions, but we all saw that coming.

It must be said that Longlegs has been making waves in recent months thanks to one of the smartest viral marketing campaigns in decades. That marketing has now paid off, with Neon Studios having already made enough money to be profitable on the film – assuming the usual rule that a film must earn double its budget to be in the black.

But this strategy is nothing new. In fact, it refers to a film that celebrates its 25th anniversary this week. A film that set the tone for the concept of viral marketing: The Blair Witch Project.

The world first heard about The Blair Witch Project in the summer of 1998, when its official website went live. In keeping with the movie itself, the website presented the story as entirely true, selling it through interviews and news articles about the Blair Witch legend. Today, you would have millions of news articles debunking each lie, but back then, it was catnip for the burgeoning community of forums and chat rooms.

Learn more: How The Blair Witch Project Made Audiences Ask, ‘Is This Real?’ (Yahoo Entertainment)

It was a relatively new way to market a movie in the ’90s, as studios tried to figure out how best to take advantage of the growing ubiquity of the web.

Even in terms of trailers, things were played more subtly than they would be today. A trailer first leaked on the movie fansite Ain’t It Cool News and was also shown on college campuses. Then, the studio capitalized on the popularity of the first Star Wars prequel, showing a cryptic 40-second clip before screenings of one of the biggest films of the year. This directed even more people to the viral marketing behind the legend.

All of these tricks influenced how Longlegs was sold to audiences. Much like The Blair Witch Project, Neon allowed horror fans to feel like they were “discovering” Longlegs for themselves. The cryptic clips posted to YouTube didn’t even use the film’s title at first, building a chilling story inspired by the iconography of real-life crimes.

Learn more: Longlegs Director Reveals Meaning of Film’s Ending (The Independent)

Much like Blair Witch, the clips were more about tone and terror than revealing the actual plot of the film. This opened the door to something that didn’t exist for The Blair Witch Project in 1999: TikTok.

Longlegs has been getting a lot of buzz on TikTok in recent months, with creators piecing together different clips and teasers to tell the story of the marketing campaign as a whole. This has had a big impact in 2024, as it’s very rare for audiences to go see a movie without knowing everything about it.

Watch: Longlegs Trailer With Scary 911 Call

Longlegs didn’t try to pass itself off as real like Blair Witch did, but it managed to use many of the same cryptic tricks. It hid the plot from potential audiences, while using the internet to create organic buzz. The studio has already proven successful in this endeavor, with Neon having the best opening weekend at the U.S. box office in its history.

Learn more: People are just beginning to realize how closely the new horror film Longlegs ties into this classic romantic comedy. (HuffPost)

Horror movies often have to work harder than most to get noticed. Horror blockbusters like A Quiet Place and MaXXXine have the backing of major studios, but others have to find a way to stand out from the mass of horror movies in theaters and the vast amounts of scary content—both good and terrible—on streaming services.

Longlegs managed to do that, and it can certainly thank the techniques of a 25-year-old horror classic for that.

Longlegs is now available in theaters.