Bruce Willis Predicted The Blair Witch Project Six Years Before Its Release

The Simpsons has long been touted as a sitcom capable of predicting the future, given that certain events seen in the series have eerily come to life years later in some form or fashion, but Bruce Willis? Sure, he had superhuman abilities in Unbreakable, but clairvoyance wasn’t one of them. However, the megastar predicted one of the biggest movies to ever hit the horror genre six years before it debuted in theaters, which then set off a chain of events that would change the industry as we know it.

In an unearthed video posted on X by director Scott Derrickson (Sinister, The Black Phone), Willis is shown on the set of Pulp Fiction in 1993 talking into a camcorder about the camcorder itself, and how the device would be used in the future. He says, “Some day in the next five years, someone’s going to take one of these and make a feature film with it,” before adding:

Some kid, some 17-year-old kid, is gonna make this killer, drop-dead, poorly-lit video movie that is gonna be the hippest f*cking thing. And then there’s gonna be hundreds of them everywhere.

Now, it might not have been a “17-year-old kid,” but directors Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez did use a Hi8 camcorder to shoot The Blair Witch Project, which hit theaters in 1999, six years after Willis’ words were spoken on the set of the Quentin Tarantino production. And, as he said, it really was “the hippest f*cking” thing,” as despite there being found footage films in the past like Cannibal Holocaust and The McPherson Tape, nothing connected with audiences quite like the low-budget indie horror flick that went on to gross nearly $250 million at the box office, but was initially shot on a budget of around $60K.

How The Blair Witch Project Injected New Life Into the Horror Genre

While horror has always been popular (despite what critics might say), during the mid to late ’90s the genre was caught in a lull of cookie-cutter films looking to replicate the success of Wes Craven’s Scream in 1996. As such, audiences were treated to a slew of mainstream imitators that tried their best, but were never able to duplicate Craven’s magic. Enter Blair Witch.

It was a complete 180-degree turn from what was being offered by the major studios, opting to trade in a sleek and stylish self-referential presentation for a down and dirty horror movie that touted itself as being the “real” footage shot by a group of students who went into the woods to film a documentary and never came out. Its clever marketing campaign led to many believing it was authentic, creating a War of the Worlds-type response that sent burgeoning internet sleuths down the rabbit hole to find out what really happened.

Word eventually got out that it was just a movie, but it was a movie like no other at the time. One that – like Scream – set off a chain reaction in Hollywood that injected new life into the horror genre. However, unlike the drudge that came after Craven’s masterpiece (admittedly there were a few gems, like Urban Legends), filmmakers grabbed their handled cameras to deliver fresh and original tales that were on par, or better than Blair Witch. Paranormal Activity, [REC], and Cloverfield all followed in its wake, and more recently, the subgenre of found footage has proven to still be alive and well thanks to the V/H/S/ franchise, which just released its seventh incredible installment, V/H/S/Beyond.

So, really, Willis’ prediction was two-fold. Not only did he foresee The Blair Witch Project, but he also foresaw the “hundreds” of films that followed. This is all tongue-in-cheek, of course, as anyone with a sense of the industry could have seen where it might be headed, and how the camcorder would fit into it, but because it was Willis who was caught on camera making the prediction, it’s kind of fun to think that maybe he does have a little ESP in him.