A co-director sparks new hope for the "Blair Witch Project 3" release date; Eduardo Sanchez said it could happen in the next two years, and it's going to be a direct sequel to the original.

There's new headway made on the "Blair Witch Project 3" release date, with co-directors Eduardo Sanchez and Daniel Myrick more or less on the same page with the launch. Sanchez also said in an interview the third "Blair Witch Project" is a direct follow-up to the first movie, and not a spin-off like "Blair Witch Project: Book of Shadows."

Sanchez said one of the roadblocks for the third Blair Witch movie involved Lionsgate calling the shots of production. He and Myrick tried to get the ball rolling for around four years now.

"The film seems inevitable to me, but really it's just a matter of it being the right time," Sanchez said in an interview with Dread Central.

"I'm thinking it's going to happen sooner than later at this point, but I always say that. There's always rumblings and certain ideas being pushed around and such. While I don't have anything firm to talk about now, it wouldn't surprise me if something happened within the next year or two."

A release date is apparently set as early as next year, but there's still the red tape of getting the project produced (cinemablend.com). Sanchez also confessed in 2001 he had qualms with the sequel, which released to unfavorable reviews:

"It's like if the sequel to Jaws started with shots of people lined up to see Jaws in the movie theater. For Book of Shadows it worked in a certain way but to me my biggest gripe with Artisan was you shouldn't have called it Blair Witch 2. It would've been fine to call it Blair Witch Chronicles. It wasn't really a sequel to our movie. So [Blair Witch 3] would be a direct sequel to our film living in that mythology of Burkittsville, being possessed, haunted by something."

Stay tuned for updates on "The Blair Witch Project 3" release date, which is expected to return to the story arc started in Burkittsville.