Universal Pictures and Peacock forked over an amount somewhere in the range of $400 million to acquire the rights to distribute a trilogy of sequels to the 1973 classic The Exorcist, which were going to be another collaboration between Blumhouse Productions and director David Gordon Green (who previously delivered a trilogy of Halloween sequels for Blumhouse and Universal). By the time Green’s first Exorcist movie, The Exorcist: Believer, reached theatres last October, the script for a sequel titled The Exorcist: Deceiver, which was scheduled for an April 18, 2025 theatrical release, was ready and the story of the third film was mapped out… Believer‘s box office numbers were okay, the movie pulled in $137 million on a $30 million budget, but Universal was hoping for a lot better than “okay,” and the reactions were largely negative. (You can read our 4/10 review HERE.) So the plans for The Exorcist: Deceiver were set aside and Green left the project. During a recent interview with IndieWire, Green addressed his departure from the Exorcist franchise and revealed that the second film in his trilogy would have followed Ann Dowd’s character Ann, a former prospective nun turned nurse, and would have been filmed in Europe.
Green crafted the story for The Exorcist: Believer with Danny McBride (who wrote all three of the new Halloweens with him) and their Halloween Kills co-writer Scott Teems, then wrote the screenplay with Peter Sattler (Broken Diamonds). Here’s the synopsis: Since the death of his pregnant wife in a Haitian earthquake 12 years ago, Victor Fielding has raised their daughter on his own. But when Angela and her friend Katherine, disappear in the woods, only to return three days later with no memory of what happened to them, it unleashes a chain of events that will force Victor to confront the nadir of evil and, in his terror and desperation, seek out the only person alive who has witnessed anything like it before: Chris MacNeil.
Speaking with IndieWire, Green had this to say about what happened behind the scenes as the franchise started to move forward: “It’s complicated. It’s long and complicated. We had our next one written and had it mapped out for the third one. Again, it was ambitious, complicated. We were going to Europe for some pretty extraordinary backdrops. It was one of those things where all of the creative parties got together. What I’m pitching, in terms of my professional ambition is, I need the creative freedom and give me the budgetary constraints so I can keep control of that. That’s something we learned pretty quickly, [with] expectations that are limitless and really daunting. So, for me to keep that creative freedom and be able to make the choices I wanted to make… As you see with the Halloween movies, the choices I make aren’t always the most popular ones. So it’s trying to make something that me, and my great friends at Blumhouse and Morgan Creek, want [for] that property to be fulfilled, as much as the audience is there and has the appetite for it. I don’t think they were on the journey I was excited about taking. … (The Exorcist: Deceiver) was going to follow Ann Dowd’s character.“
He went on to say, “All I know is, give me some boundaries and let me loose. If there are a lot of people poking me about ideas and thoughts and notes? I’m not best in those environments. It’s just trying to make everybody get what they need. I’ve made such great friends with so many executives at Universal and Blumhouse and Morgan Creek, I just want to make sure they’re doing what they feel confident in and makes them the most money. Or whatever it is they’re looking for in their satisfying experience. For me, it’s creative freedom. Every time. And I’ll always turn a corner and figure out where the freedom is. And also where the spontaneity is. I like to reinvent myself. … And the other part of me thinks, well, shit, if I could have finished that Exorcist trilogy, I could be financing my own movies for the rest of my life. And that would be super cool if I could have turned that into what I had imagined it being, both creatively and financially. It would have been an amazing opportunity for me as a benefactor to indie movies and my own creative projects. So, that was kind of the goal in mind and it just seemed like that was going to not happen, so I took a different route.“
Blumhouse, Universal, and Peacock still intend to complete the trilogy of Exorcist sequels, just without Green’s input. Genre regular Mike Flanagan has since been hired to write and direct an Exorcist film that’s hoping to make the scariest film of his career.
What do you think of what David Gordon Green had to say about The Exorcist: Deceiver falling apart? Would you have liked to see what the film had in store for us, with Ann Dowd returning and European filming locations? Let us know by leaving a comment below.