After reviving the Halloween franchise in 2018 to the tune of a quarter billion dollars, Blumhouse is again eyeing director David Gordon Green to put a new lease on life into an all-time horror classic, in the form of The Exorcist. The director of everything from The Pineapple Express to the upcoming Halloween Kills is reportedly planning on handling an Exorcist sequel for the studio, presumably relying on the same sort of formula the company has established for Halloween. According to The Observer, Blumhouse has teamed with Morgan Creek on the project.
The news of an Exorcist sequel has been floating around for a while, but what might this project actually look like? Well, judging from Halloween and its success, we would expect it to be a sequel taking place in the same universe as William Friedkin’s original 1973 film. We would likewise expect Green’s movie to ignore all the badly regarded Exorcist sequels—even the occasionally defended Exorcist 3—and follow up somehow years later with the story of Regan MacNeil or her children. Somehow, we wouldn’t expect Linda Blair to be involved in a substantial way, outside of perhaps a cameo.
With that said, Green has a pretty busy slate in front of him, and it’s hard to imagine an Exorcist sequel being released in 2021, as was initially reported. Halloween Kills was pushed back from its intended release in October of this year, and will now drop on Oct. 15, 2021. That also pushed back the release of Halloween Ends, Green’s last film in the new Halloween chronology, to Oct. 14, 2022. Given that, we’d likely be expecting a new Exorcist to arrive in 2022 at the earliest.
Ultimately, we’ll just be hoping for something better than 1977’s Exorcist II: The Heretic … although if the film somehow ends up as worse than that first sequel, it will be a truly memorable affair all the same.