
The Blair Witch Project’s 1999 launch hinged on a guerrilla marketing campaign that presented the fictional disappearance of three student filmmakers as a real event. Directors Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez built a faux‑documentary narrative, complete with missing‑person posters, a dedicated website, and an IMDb listing that marked the actors as “missing, presumed dead.” The strategy leveraged the era’s limited internet verification tools, prompting widespread belief and conversation. The viral buzz helped the ultra‑low‑budget film earn over $140 million worldwide.

Producer Zainab Azizi recounts her rise from a WME mailroom clerk to president of Raimi Productions, detailing how she shepherded the original comedy Send Help from a 2019 logline to a theatrical release. She explains moving the project from Columbia...