This Halloween season will bring the highly anticipated revival of the legendary Exorcist franchise. The moment has come for acclaimed director David Gordon Green to begin work on the first movie in the trilogy that will bring back the Exorcist series, which has been dormant for over 20 years since the release of Dominion: Prequel to the Exorcist in 2005.
Green was gracious enough to provide information about his upcoming major project while addressing the media at the opening of his most recent horror film, Halloween Ends. “We start in a couple of weeks, and we’re ready to roll up our sleeves and dive into the next great franchise. We’ve got an amazing cast coming together and scripts we’re all excited about,” Green told Variety when asked for updates on the Exorcist reboot.
The Exorcist (1973) by William Friedkin, which established new ground for the genre by becoming the first horror film to garner an Academy Award nomination for Best Picture, will be directly followed by the as-yet-untitled Exorcist movie. Green, who is typically associated with the comedy genre, captured the hearts of horror fans when he joined the Halloween series revival and ultimately produced a gripping, hair-raising experience that satiated the hungry gaze of slasher-film devotees. The Exorcist, which, like Halloween, will be a retcon and try to draw connections to other films, is the next major horror franchise Green has his sights set on updating.
We are pulling for him because Universal has put $400 million on the trilogy and trusts him to complete it. Fan excitement is at an all-time high thanks to the veteran of the franchise Ellen Burstyn’s return to the remake after first declining the chance to play her part in earlier films. The Exorcist revival will also feature Leslie Odom Jr. from The Many Saints of Newark and Ann Dowd from The Handmaid’s Tale in addition to Burstyn. Green collaborated with Scott Teems and Danny McBride to create the plot for the first movie of the remake. The script was written by Green and Peter Sattler.