With Halloween 2018 (watch that HERE) and Halloween Kills (now in theatres and on the Peacock streaming service) down, director David Gordon Green is ready to wrap up his Halloween sequel trilogy with Halloween Ends, which is set to start filming in January for an October 14, 2022 release. Once he’s done with that, he’ll be diving right into a revival of another classic horror property, as he’s going to direct a new film in the Exorcist franchise that is aiming for an October 13, 2023 release. When Green’s Exorcist was announced back in July, it was already said that this was going to be the first entry in a trilogy – but since the director just got done making three Halloween movies in a row and he’s also planning to make a movie about the creation of Disneyland, it would be understandable if he only directed the first Exorcist movie and then passed the helm over to a different director (or different directors) for the two follow-ups. But that’s not the case. Speaking with Collider, Green confirmed that he intends to direct and co-write all three Exorcist movies, just like he did on the Halloween movies.
Asked if he will be doing all three films, Green said,
That’s the idea right now, yeah. … The first one of our trilogy is written and the second two are being outlined. So we’ve got a ways to go on that, but we know where we’re going. It’s a new journey, some familiar characters and some new ones as well.”
Green’s The Exorcist is set to star Leslie Odom Jr. and Ellen Burstyn, who will be reprising the role of Chris MacNeil from the original The Exorcist (watch it HERE). All we know about the story is that Odom is playing a character who
tracks down Chris MacNeil after his child becomes possessed.
Universal and Peacock paid an amount somewhere in the range of $400 million to acquire the rights to distribute this new Exorcist trilogy. Coming to us from Blumhouse Productions and Morgan Creek Entertainment, the films are being produced by Jason Blum, David Robinson, and James Robinson. Green, Danny McBride, and Couper Samuelson serve as executive producers. Ryan Turek is overseeing the project for Blumhouse.
The original announcement informed us that Green crafted the story for The Exorcist 2023 with Peter Sattler (Broken Diamonds), then wrote the screenplay with McBride (who has written all three of the new Halloweens with him) and their Halloween Kills co-writer Scott Teems.
Green recently spoke with movie host Joe Bob Briggs about working on The Exorcist, and you can read a transcript of their conversation HERE.