A featurette takes a behind-the-scenes look at The Exorcist: Believer with director David Gordon Green, star Ellen Burstyn, and others
We’re just two weeks away from the October 6th theatrical release of director David Gordon Green‘s The Exorcist: Believer, and today a featurette has arrived online to give us a behind-the-scenes look at the film with Green and some of the cast members, including Ellen Burstyn, who reprises the role of Chris MacNeil, the character she played in the 1973 classic The Exorcist. You can watch the featurette in the embed above.
Green recently finished working on a trilogy of Halloween sequels for Universal and Blumhouse that consisted of Halloween (2018), Halloween Kills, and Halloween Ends. Now he’s working with the companies on a trilogy of sequels to The Exorcist (watch it HERE) that begins with Believer. Green crafted the story for the film with Danny McBride (who wrote all three of the new Halloweens with him) and their Halloween Kills co-writer Scott Teems, then wrote the screenplay with Peter Sattler (Broken Diamonds). Here’s the synopsis: 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.
Chris MacNeil is “an actress who has been forever altered by what happened to her daughter Regan five decades before.” Burstyn is joined in the cast by Leslie Odom Jr. (Hamilton) as Victor Fielding, Lidya Jewett (Nightbooks) as Angela, and newcomer Olivia O’Neill as her 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.
Okwui Okpokwasili (Master) is also in the cast, playing an unspecified role, and Raphael Sbarge (Carnosaur) plays a pastor. Original The Exorcist star Linda Blair is in there as well, 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.
Universal and Peacock forked over an amount somewhere in the range of $400 million to acquire the rights to distribute this trilogy, so you can understand why they’re trying to avoid competition. That’s a lot of money to recoup. It has already been announced that the next sequel, titled The Exorcist: Deceiver, will be reaching theatres on April 18, 2025.
What did you think of the The Exorcist: Believer featurette? Will you be watching this movie next month? Let us know by leaving a comment below.
If you’d rather just rewatch the original, that will be in theatres next month as well.
