Russell Crowe's Horror Flop The Exorcism Just Broke The Worst Kind Of Box Office Record

One would be forgiven for not knowing it, but a new exorcism movie starring Oscar-winner Russell Crowe hit theaters this past weekend. No, we're not talking about last year's "The Pope's Exorcist." Rather, we are talking about a brand new film from Vertical Entertainment simply titled "The Exorcism" that was, more or less, dumped after sitting on the shelf for several years. Unfortunately, the film is a flop in the early going by most metrics. However, it now holds a record for the folks at Vertical, representing the company's biggest opening weekend ever, amazingly enough.

Director Joshua John Miller's "The Exorcism" opened to $2.4 million, coming at number seven on the charts behind John Krasinski's "IF" ($2.7 million), a movie in its sixth weekend in theaters that is already on VOD. Not exactly a blockbuster. That said, the number was big enough to overtake 2018's "Gotti" ($1.7 million) to become Vertical's biggest opener. That says an awful lot about the kind of films that Vertical is typically playing with, as they are usually banking on small-budget plays doing a little bit of business in theaters before they make money on VOD, DVD, etc. after the fact.

John Travolta's ill-fated mob movie "Gotti" is one of the rare movies to ever earn a 0% on Rotten Tomatoes, giving it an odd place in cinema history. It was also a film that MoviePass had a stake in just before the company went belly up. So it's not exactly a movie with a high bar to clear and it's not something one wants to be compared to. Even so, if "The Exorcism" can clear $6.6 million worldwide, it will take the crown as Vertical's highest global grosser. Coupled with what the film made overseas, its running total stands at $4.1 million, so that's pretty much in the bag at this point.

"The Exorcism" centers on a troubled actor named Anthony Miller (Crowe) who begins unraveling while on the set of his latest horror film. His daughter Lee (Ryan Simpkins) questions whether it is his past addictions or something darker at play. The cast also includes Sam Worthington ("Avatar"), Chloe Bailey ("Swarm"), Adam Goldberg ("The Equalizer"), and David Hyde Pierce ("Frasier").

Miller's film has been eviscerated by critics and audiences alike. It holds a terrible D CinemaScore, the worst we've seen for any movie in months, meaning word of mouth is going to be lousy. /FIlm's Chris Evangelista said that the movie had potential but "Sadly, that potential is squandered" in his 4 out of 10 review of "The Exorcism." It's likely to make its way to VOD in no time. 

Vertical acquired the North American rights to the film, which was originally funded and produced by Miramax. It was actually filmed nearly five years ago in late 2019. Then, the pandemic hit and it got shelved, with reshoots taking place last year. Ultimately, Miramax seemingly realized it was going to be a mess and they were trying to mitigate losses. Shudder also acquired the streaming rights and, frankly, that feels like a good home for a movie like this.

Miramax in no way can expect to fully recover its investment. That said, Vertical probably didn't pay a whole lot for the U.S. rights and Shudder probably got a sweetheart deal for the streaming rights. So someone is going to benefit here, in the end. It just won't be the original investors, that much seems certain.

"The Exorcism" is in theaters now.