According to Dave McNary at Variety, the Bigfoot found-footage film Exists has scheduled its cast for a Monday, April 9th start of production. The movie is thanks to the good folks at Haxan Films and Amber Entertainment.

Actors Dora Madison Burge, Samuel Davis, Roger Edwards, Chris Osborn and Denise Williamson will begin shooting next week at Spiderwood Studios in Elgin, Texas with Eduardo Sanchez (The Blair Witch Project, Lovely Molly) directing from a Jamie Nash script.

Bigfoot will be played by Brian Steele (Hellboy).

Producers are Robin Cowie, Jane Fleming, Andy Jenkins and Mark Ordesky with Gregg Hale and Reed Frerichs being the executive producers.

The origin of this movie is a familiar one to readers of Cryptomundo. As publicity from their studio states, “Ever since we experienced the 1972 film The Legend of Boggy Creek, Haxan has dreamed of bringing Bigfoot back to the dark side.”

The timing for this movie seems rather remarkable with the new release of Lyle Blackburn’s The Beast of Boggy Creek: The True Story of the Fouke Monster just hitting the stands and online booksellers.

I worked closely with Gregg Hale and the folks at Haxan Films on the new version of In Search Of (as the senior series consultant) several years ago in 2002. They told me then how important Bigfoot was to their beginnings. It is no surprise they found a way to return to their roots. Haxan was also behind the “Civil War Thunderbird” fake on Freakylinks. Exists will be a cryptofiction horror film, that’s for sure.

Variety notes that Exists, Sanchez’s first foray into found footage since 1999′s The Blair Witch Project, is “a horror-thriller that chronicles a group of friends who set out into a remote Texas woods for a weekend of fun and are stalked and hunted by Bigfoot. It’s the second film produced under a multi-picture collaboration between Haxan and Amber following Lovely Molly, which bowed at the Midnight Madness lineup at Toronto and SXSW and is being released by Image Entertainment on May 18.”

The found-footage fictional film (sorry to spoil it for ya) The Blair Witch Project took in more than $140 million domestically, mostly due to its online word-of-mouth push and viral marketing campaigns. The film grossed $250 million worldwide.

The Haxan Facebook page for Exists is here.

Thanks JP.