Actors Joshua Leonard Michael Williams and Rei Hance (formerly known as Heather Donahue) were the three stars of The Blair Witch Project who not only acted, but improvised most of the dialect in the found footage horror film.
At the time the three acted in the movie they had a budget… and I am not kidding about this… of $60,000! That left almost nothing for actor wages. But then the film grossed an insane $248m and the actors never saw dime one of that win fall.
Now they asking for a retro payment for their work in the 1999 film.
The letter, published on Leonard’s Facebook page, called for “retroactive and future residual payments” for the three actors for their work in the 1999 film, “equivalent to the sum that would’ve been allotted through [actors’ union] Sag-Aftra”, and say they did not have “proper union or legal representation when the film was made”.
“Our film has now been rebooted twice, both times were a disappointment,” the open letter reads. “As the insiders who created the Blair Witch … we’re your single greatest, yet thus-far unutilized secret-weapon!”
“I’m so proud of our little punk-rock movie,” Leonard wrote. “But at this point, it’s 25 years of disrespect from the folks who’ve pocketed the lion’s share … of the profits from our work, and that feels both icky and classless.”