The film dropped out of the top-ten list in its 10th weekend until its last screening in 107 theaters in its 17th weekend, grossing $28,866 and placing in number sixty-three. The film descended at number three in its fifth weekend, at number five in its sixth weekend, and number eight in its seventh and eighth weekends during Labor Day. The film secured its second place in its fourth weekend, behind another horror film The Sixth Sense, which cleared $26.7 million. The film went on to gross $29.2 million from 1,101 locations and placed at number two in the United States box office third opening weekend, surpassing the science fiction horror film Deep Blue Sea which cleared $19.1 million weekend gross. The film earned $1.5 million in its limited release opening weekend. The distribution strategy for the film was created and implemented by Artisan studio executive Steven Rothenberg. The Blair Witch Project premiered on Januat the Sundance Film Festival, and had a limited release on July 14 before going wide on July 30 after months of publicity, including a campaign by the studio to use the Internet and suggest that the film was 'a record of real events'. The film's website contains materials of actors posing as police and investigators giving testimony about their casework, and shared childhood photos of the actors to add a sense of realism. The IMDb page also listed the actors as 'missing, presumed dead' in the first year of the film's availability. The campaign tactic was that viewers were being told, through missing persons posters, that the characters were missing while researching in the woods for the mythical Blair Witch. During screenings, the filmmakers made advertising efforts to promulgate the events in the film as factual, including the distribution of flyers at festivals such as Sundance, asking viewers to come forward with any information about the 'missing' students. These augmented the film's found footage device to spark debates across the Internet over whether the film was a real-life documentary or a work of fiction. The film's official website featured faux police reports as well as 'newsreel-style' interviews. The Blair Witch Project is thought to be the first widely released film marketed primarily by the Internet.
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