Fortunately, we made out very well with Blair Witch; probably better than anyone else had ever made out on their first film. Artisan built their deal around a film that was going to made $5-8m dollars -- $10m max -- so basically anything above $10m, they gave us a great deal. They didn't think they'd ever have to pay on those promises. At the time, nothing had ever happened like Blair Witch. The big indie success stories were She's Gotta Have It, Clerks and El Mariachi, and none of those movies broke $10m. Their thinking was, "Man, if we can make El Mariachi money, we're set!"

In our wildest predictions we couldn't have guessed the financial success of the movie. We were joking with Artisan -- and they had high hopes, expecting it to do $5-8m at the box office -- and we said, "If it breaks $10m, you have to buy us a competition-grade Foosball table." They said, "Yeah, no problem!" I think in its first weekend it made $30m or so, and they lived up to their promise; they sent us a Foosball table shortly after that!

When the film was on the covers of Time Magazine and Newsweek in the same week in the States, I think that's when we realised Blair was a really big deal. But for the filmmaking world, I think the first weekend it opened wide, where it came in number 2 -- but on much fewer screens -- to Runaway Bride. When that happened, and we were competing for space in theatres with the world's biggest movie star at the time, for us that was a huge moment.

Ed and I have a prequel idea and a couple of sequel ideas and we're in the process now of revisiting a prequel idea that we would like to do in the hopes we can get Lionsgate on board with the ten year anniversary raising awareness again. You know how the economy is, but it seems like films that already have a brand and an established lineage like Blair Witch are the kind of films getting made, so we're hoping we can get it resurrected somehow. Some of the ideas we have are more traditional narrative ideas that play with the mythology we've created around Blair Witch and what we really don't want to do is betray that mythology. We don't want to come up with some gimmicky way to shoot a sequel that's reminiscent of the first film -- because shooting like that is a gimmick -- and for it to come across as contrived. That doesn't mean that there aren't other innovative ways to play with style and process, but I think Ed and I are most concerned with honouring the mythology.

The first time we cut the movie, we knew it was too long -- it was about two and a half hours. There's a lot of good stuff that didn't make the film. I'm really happy with the film and I think we cut it as well as we could. There's plenty of fan interest, though not so much from Lionsgate, but I really would love to put out a two-and-a-half hour version of the movie on DVD; like a Criterion edition with a bunch of extra footage.

There's a great confessional with Mike that didn't make the movie. He also had this great scene in the woods where he lost his mind, started punching trees, it was really hardcore. There's a really cool poetry reading scene in the hotel they spend the night in where Josh and Mike are duelling with their own poetry. At that point in the film we just had to get them into the woods, so as cool as it was it had to go. They shot so much cool stuff and they rolled on everything. I think we could put together at least another hour of really, really solid footage.

At the end of the day, no matter what Dan and I do, and no matter what success or non-success we have in our careers, we have our Star Wars. Not that Blair Witch is as good as Star Wars, but we have this film that's going to be remembered for a long time, particularly in the horror genre, and I think both of us consider ourselves extremely lucky to have had a film like that.

I get surprised when I read a book that has nothing to do with film at all and the author's talking about getting "Blair Witched" or something like that. It's almost become a verb. That's when I step back and go, "Wow." It has transcended what it originally was and it's become such a part of the lexicon, and synonymous with being scared or hoaxed, and that's really kind of amazing. For that I'm so flattered and so thankful. We could not have hoped or imagined anything more fantastic and grander than Blair Witch. I really feel, if I don't make another movie ever again, we got our opportunity to leave our mark, and as a filmmaker that's one of your dreams. It's why you do what you do.