The primary focus of this chapter is on what could be broadly described as The Blair Witch Project's political economy. This includes a consideration of the film's relationship to patterns of ownership and the economic structures of film production, distribution, and marketing within the structure of the entertainment industry and in the context of its critical and popular reception. The second half of the essay historicizes BWP in relation to film production and exhibition in the 1890s, and concludes with an examination of its mythic status as an independent film that threatened to undermine Hollywood's blockbuster paradigm. By placing BWP in these broader historical, cultural, and institutional contexts there comes a greater understanding of this individual film and contemporary film in general.