After producing films like The Black Phone, The Invisible Man, and Jordan Peele’s Us, you’d think it would take a lot to scare Jason Blum. As it turns out, what frightens Blum is a megastar with a cult-like fan following. I’m talking about Pennsylvania-born entertainer Taylor Swift! The blonde bombshell’s Eras Tour film is shaking it off in theaters this October, and the Blumhouse founder’s latest fright fest, The Exorcist: Believer, is getting out of her way.
“The one thing that scares me to death is Taylor Swift,” Blum joked with Entertainment Weekly about competing with Swift’s concert film for box office supremacy. Initially, Blum wanted to unleash The Exorcist: Believer on October 13, a Friday well-suited for the spookiest month of the year. However, when fans began sharing the hashtag #Exorswift on Twitter, Blum considered a release date change for the latest chapter in the Exorcist saga.
In a hilarious tweet, Blum said, “Look what you made me do,” a clever nod to Swift’s 2017 banger. “The Exorcist: Believer moves to 10/6/23 #TaylorWins,” Blum added.
“Obviously, we moved off that [date] and we bowed our head to Taylor Swift,” Blum concedes. “It was too risky to see if ‘Exorswift’ was going to take or not. People will still have the Exorswift opportunity, so maybe we got to have our cake and eat it too.”
Friday the 13th is a cherry date for The Exorcist: Believer to curse cinemas. However, challenging the Swifties (the name chosen by Taylor Swift fans) to a fight at the box office is a fool’s errand. I’m good friends with a dyed-in-the-wool Swiftie, and you do not want to f*ck with them. They’ve already seen the Eras Tour live, and they’re still going to the theater with like-minded friends to cheer and sing their hearts out.
Here’s the synopsis for The Exorcist: Believer:
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.
Ellen Burstyn reprises the role of Chris MacNeil, the character she played in the 1973 classic The Exorcist, “an actress who has been forever altered by what happened to her daughter Regan five decades before.” An interview with Burstyn is included in the new featurette (below). She is joined in the cast by Leslie Odom Jr. (Hamilton) as Victor, Lidya Jewett (Nightbooks) as Angela, and newcomer Olivia O’Neill as Angela’s friend Katherine. Ann Dowd (The Handmaid’s Tale) plays Victor and Angela’s neighbor, and Jennifer Nettles (The Righteous Gemstones) and Norbert Leo Butz (Fosse/Verdon) play Katherine’s parents. Original The Exorcist star Linda Blair is also in there, reprising the role of Chris MacNeil’s daughter Regan.
The Exorcist: Believer is being produced by Jason Blum, David Robinson, and James Robinson. Green, Danny McBride, Stephanie Allain, and Couper Samuelson serve as executive producers. Ryan Turek is overseeing the project for Blumhouse.
If you’re participating in the upcoming Exorswift double-feature, The Exorcist: Believer opens in theaters on October 6, 2023, with Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour stomping onto screens on October 13, 2023.