Well, knock me over with a bowl of pea soup. As the story below says, "Universal is shelling out an eye-popping $400 million to buy a new “Exorcist” trilogy with plans to screen some of the films on Peacock, its new streaming service. In a coup, Ellen Burstyn, the Oscar-winning actress who first did battle with the devil in the 1973 original, will reprise her role as Chris MacNeil." Exorcist Trilogy From Universal Cost $400 Million, Stars Ellen Burstyn - Variety I'm surprised to hear this, because as fans of the original 1973 Billy Friedkin film know, Ms. Burstyn (who is currently 88 years young) suffered back injuries on the set of the original film when a stunt went wrong, and spent the 20 years that followed in quite a bit of pain. You kind of wonder where they're going to go with this thing. (Note that Warner Bros. made the previous Exorcist films in the 1970s.) I expect they're trying to remold this as reboots of the Halloween, Friday the 13th, and Freddy Kruger franchises, which had some popularity over the last 10-15 years. You also wonder if Linda Blair will make an appearance...
I wish they would just leave it alone. Pretty desperate. If people want to watch an Exorcist film they can watch the original.
Every film in this new series needs a James Bond-style card in the credits somewhere, of course: "CAPTAIN HOWDY WILL RETURN"
In fairness, with Star Trek you have an entire futuristic world to explore where you can go anywhere and see anything and it's only because we are human beings making a TV show for humans that most of the aliens end up looking like, well, humans. In the Exorcist universe you have...uh, I dunno, people getting possessed and then exorcised, I guess?
The TV series was pretty good and had some potential but this is, again, just wringing every last drop of a franchise that should never have been. The only other worthwhile effort was the third one with George C. Scott and would probably have been much better without the studio (MillCreek as I recall) interference.
I'm a bit surprised also. The mystique or shock value of the Exorcist films is long gone and diluted by many, many similar movies over the decades and over the last few years. Although streaming series have the potential to make bucks. It does seem like $400 mil is a steep price.
I think it makes sense. There have been a lot of "possession" movies recently too. So why not go back to the original? It's like that period of 15 years after the third Indiana Jones when every movie studio was making Indiana Jones-esque movies (Mummy, National Treasure, Tomb Raider) but there was always more pent-up demand for the real McCoy, er, Jones. They could make a lot of money with this brand name if produced at an A-list level.
Me? I haven't seen it for at least 10 years, when the Blu-rays came out (and we worked on it a little bit). I'm just saying I thought the Exorcist franchise had kind of "had it" already. 100% agree with all of that. I always cringe when they want to remake or sequel-ize a classic film, because you know it's a cash-grab and it'll never be a good. (With very rare exceptions.)
If I ever appear in a movie, I want my name on the movie poster to appear in a box a la George C Scott above.
I thought there was a story that Friedkin told the grip to pull harder on the rope after Ellen Burstyn said that it was hurting her. Anyway, no interest, really. III did have its moments, I'll admit. Dan
I hope the premise of this reboot series is about a professional football player who literally makes a deal with The Devil that enables him to win 7 Super Bowls and marry a supermodel.
Nothing left to do here. Plus demon possession movies will always be tainted by the horrors inflicted on Anneliese Michel, not to mention truly demonic people like Matthew Hopkins.
