It's been a decade since the Blair Witch Project became the first film made for under a dollar-fifty to earn its makers enough money to buy their own zip codes. Back when the great day happened it was supposed to usher in a new era of dreamers with phone cams replacing big money cinematographers, and the studios just signing up some 10th graders to distribution deals and then walking around America with big barrels to fill up with cash.

Well we all know how that turned out, ten years later we sit on the near collapse of the independent film sector, Transformers 2 is the highest grossing film of the year, and there hasn't been another film since to replicate Blair's success.

Like the Apollo missions, Blair Witch seemed not a first step into a new world, but a fun-to-watch, ultimately kinda silly trip just to hit golf balls on a rock that just floats around the Earth. And as Apollo was followed by the catastrophe-prone shuttle missions, so have all the attempts to replicate the Blair dream led to heartbreak and devastation of the lives of young dreamers, who maybe shoulda just gone to dental school like their parents wanted them to in the first place.

So with that history, this year, when finally another DIY'er in the shape of Paranormal Activity broke through, one can forgive the world for forgetting we've been down this road before. But the Blair's makers haven't forgotten. In a new interview with the Toronto Star, Blair director Eduardo Sanchez said that he is seizing the new no-budget moment to get back in the game and make a new Blair film. (There was actually already misbegotten sequel which attempted to cash in on the original's success, with which Sanchez was not involved.)

Sanchez has been working with his original partner Daniel Myrick on a treatment involving the characters from the original.

Sánchez wants to use a technique he calls "mixed first-person," which would mean less reliance on the Blair Witch innovation – now a cinematic cliché – of having the protagonists speak directly into their fidgety cameras. He laughed when he saw Cloverfield, another Blair Witch wannabe, and the characters never dropped their video camera even when being chased by a Godzilla-like monster.

The closest he's seen to the mixed first-person technique he seeks is District 9, the summer '09 sci-fi hit that begins in documentary style before segueing into a conventional thriller. Sánchez hopes to first try the mixed style with Possessed, a low-budget horror he's also involved in, which he promises will "show things that have not been seen before. Hopefully audiences will dig it."

Tragically, sadly, watching Paranormal's success from his home in Canada, he tells the Star"We're at the step where we're about to pitch to Lionsgate, which owns the movie rights now. It's pretty much up to them. They can completely squash it or greenlight it."

[Via aintitcoolnews.com]

When Roth said the sequel would pick up two minutes after the original, just as Gump has dropped his son (Haley Joel Osment) off at the bus stop, one audience member asked how Roth planned to address Osment's leap in age. "Actually, I kill him off in the first ten pages," Roth blithely replied after a conspiratorial vow of secrecy. Cold! That school bus didn't look like a 1995 Saturn...

• 9/11 Killed the Forrest Gump Sequel [Slashfilm]

I am told...that "once you find out who the villain is, you'll know who's playing it." That should lead to speculation that Dylan Baker's character of Dr. Curt Connors will ultimately turn into The Lizard as he did in the comic books.

There's one other character that's been set up but is a real longshot — Daniel Gillies, who plays John Jameson, the astronaut fiance of Mary Jane in Spider-Man 2. In the comics he becomes the villain Man-Wolf. Raimi has said in the past that he wants the best actors to play the villains in the movie, not necessarily the most famous.

And don't even get her started on The Kangaroo's back story! (Seriously, though—Philip Seymour Hoffman, if you're listening, you were born to play the part.)

• EXCLUSIVE: Sony Locks In Sam Raimi & Tobey Maguire in 'Spider-Man 4'; Studio May Shoot '4' and '5' At The Same Time [Deadline Hollywood Daily]

"When you do a movie like this, a sequel that's very, very anticipated, people anticipate ultimately that it's going to be the Second Coming," Lucas says.

"And it's not. It's just a movie. Just like the other movies. You probably have fond memories of the other movies. But if you went back and looked at them, they might not hold up the same way your memory holds up." [...]

"When people approach the new ('Indiana Jones'), much like they did with 'Phantom Menace,' they have a tendency to be a little harder on it," he says. "You're not going to get a lot of accolades doing a movie like this. All you can do is lose." [...]

Lucas says that doesn't hold much sway for him, Spielberg and Harrison Ford.

"We came back to do ('Indy') because we wanted to have fun," he says. "It's not going to make much money for us in the end. We all have some money. ... It would make a lot of money if you weren't rich. But we're not doing it for the money."

True, when you're worth $3 billion, another $50 million give or take is hardly going to make or break you. That fanboy-fuck-you-fortune allows Lucas and his collaborators the luxury of perhaps getting a tiny bit experimental with supposdly sacred texts; it's only once you let go of preconceived notions like "justifiable sequels" and "good movies," and allow yourself to truly respond to your creative instinct to, say, add a patois-spouting duck-ape or Mexican Rerun into the mix, that cinematic alchemy can truly occur.

• George Lucas Says His New 'Indiana Jones' Is 'Just a Movie' [USA Today]

• 'Lost Boys 2': Exclusive Trailer And Details [mtv.com]

Disney will proceed with a third installment of its hit dance franchise "Step Up," tentatively titled "Step Up 3-D."

Pic will become the latest 3-D live-action film from the Mouse House, with "Step Up 2 the Streets" director Jon Chu in talks to reprise.

That the young maverick Chu is returning to direct should come as a huge relief to fans of the franchise. Disney execs could just have easily tanked the project by farming it out to CGI-addict Bob Zemeckis, who'd transform the likable cast into dead-eyed, computer-generated dance-zombies, after a lengthy and expensive process the would require Channing Tatum to spend approximately 720 hours doing the clown walk in a bright green leotard covered in thousands of tiny motion censors.

• Disney planning 'Step Up 3-D' [Variety via Thighs Wide Shut]