Mike Flanagan's Exorcist Movie Will Stand Alone, Won't Be Sequel To Believer

Before Universal Pictures even spent a single penny on producing its planned "Exorcist" trilogy, the studio had already shelled out an eye-watering $400 million for the rights to make the trilogy. So, when David Gordon Green's "The Exorcist: Believer" was widely panned in reviews and grossed $136.2 million worldwide (a perfectly good performance for most horror movies, but most horror movies don't have a $400 million investment to recoup), there was a change of plans.

We already knew that Green wouldn't be returning to direct the next sequel, and we recently learned that beloved modern horror maestro Mike Flanagan ("The Haunting of Hill House") had been recruited to replace him. Now, Morgan Creek and Blumhouse have put out a press release to emphasize that the trilogy concept is caput. Flanagan's movie will not be a sequel to "The Exorcist: Believer," but a "radical new take" on the source material.

By the sounds of it, Flanagan came in with a strong pitch. "I immediately responded to Mike's new take on the world of 'The Exorcist' and can't wait for audiences to experience it," says Blumhouse CEO Jason Blum in the press release. Flanagan was also quoted as saying that the original film holds a special place in his heart: "'The Exorcist' is one of the reasons I became a filmmaker, and it is an honor to have the chance to try something fresh, bold, and terrifying within its universe."

If most other filmmakers promised a "fresh, bold" take on a horror classic, I'd be skeptical. However, Flanagan has a proven track record both with honoring what has gone before and adding enough original ideas to an old story to make it interesting again. His adaptation of Stephen King's "The Shining" sequel, "Doctor Sleep," was so good that it healed an old wound for King — who famously hated Stanley Kubrick's adaptation of his original novel. "I read the script very, very carefully and I said to myself, 'Everything that I ever disliked about the Kubrick version of 'The Shining' is redeemed for me here,'" said King.

Flanagan will both write and direct the next "Exorcist" film, as well as produce it. This is particularly reassuring because Flanagan's more recent Netflix horror shows, "The Midnight Club" and "The Fall of the House of Usher," saw him sharing directing duties and were noticeably worse than his first two series, "The Haunting of Hill House" and "Midnight Mass," for which he directed every episode. While every movie is obviously a collaborative work, Flanagan is at his best when he's a true auteur.

Whether he'll be able to deliver the box office results that the "Exorcist" franchise needs is another matter. While "Doctor Sleep" was highly praised by critics and fans alike, it was a commercial dud with a global box office take of just $72.3 million against a budget in the $50 million range. And since most of Flanagan's other work has been on the streaming side, he's largely untested in theaters. 

Frankly, expecting any "Exorcist" sequel to recoup the money spent by Universal is unrealistic. The fairest thing would be to write off that $400 million as a moment of corporate madness and judge Flanagan's film only against its own budget. Either that, or pray to Pazuzu for a demonic miracle.