If you get your movie news from a number of different websites, don't be surprised to see most of them sporting some variant of a headline that reads "Blair Witch Director Finds Bigfoot." And while that's perfectly understandable considering Eduardo Sanchez's most prominent success to date is co-directing the hugely successful (and influential) Blair Witch Project, for my money his name should always be tied to Altered. And yes, I realize that if you've followed my film talk over the years, I've become a bit of a broken record cheerleader for Sanchez's underseen and underappreciated flick about a group of rednecks who kidnap one of the aliens that visited them as children, but that's only because I legitimately love the hell out of it. It has a unique premise (a hard thing to do when it comes to aliens), some very solid performances and some truly wicked makeup effects that kick my ass every time.

That's why I am incredibly excited to learn that Sanchez wiill be reteaming with Altered writing partner Jamie Nash for Exists, a movie about a group of buddies on a cabin retreat who are, "methodically hunted by a Bigfoot-like beast." Granted, it's not the most world-shattering premise around, but combine the writer/director team with Weta Workshop and Spectral Motion on monster design duties, and I think genre fans are going to be in for a treat once Exists starts filming outside Austin, TX this Fall.

And if that news isn't interesting enough on its own, Exists is actually going to be the first in a trilogy of Bigfoot re-invention films produced by Sanchez' Haxan Films and Amber Entertainment. We don't know what the other two films in the set will be, or if Sanchez will be directing, but the idea of a triumverate of new Bigfoot flicks on the horizon has me thinking that any other movie news announced this week is all downhere from here. Screw vampires and zombies, Bigfoot's back!