It was announced late last year that Blumhouse and Morgan Creek were developing a series of direct sequels to William Friedkin's 1973 horror masterpiece, The Exorcist, with Halloween Ends director David Gordon Green set to helm the planned trilogy.
Now, the filmmaker has shared an update that might leave fans of the original's heads spinning.
While chatting to MovieMaker.com about the new films, Green revealed that Friedkin won't be involved with the sequel trilogy in any capacity, with the legendary Ellen Burstyn instead serving as their "spiritual guru."
"Our Exorcist is linked narratively by its characters, but it isn’t in terms of stylistic parallels. I’m not leaning into what Friedkin did, but it is going deep into who Chris MacNeil is and what she brought to the table. Without giving away too much, the tools and insights that she’s utilized over fifty years find a new application."
"Ellen’s the one we’ve brought on board, and we filmed eight days with her a year ago to do some technical and creative explorations, and next week we get back in the ring," he continued. "So to answer your question, Friedkin’s not involved in this. If he’s as good as John Carpenter at making music, we’ll get him to do a song in the movie. He can do a trombone version of Tubular Bells."
There was a lot of support for Green taking the helm of a new Exorcist trilogy when the well-received Halloween 2018 was released, but after Kills and Ends... not so much! Now, fans are more than a little worried about what the director has planned.
Widely considered one of the scariest movies ever made, The Exorcist focused on a possessed young girl (Blair) and her mother's (Burstyn) attempts to free her from the grip of the demon with the help of two priests (Jason Miller and Max Von Sydow).
Of course, the movie already has two sequels. The first, John Boorman's surreal The Heretic, was critically panned and actually had very little to do with the events of the first film. However, William Peter Blatty's The Exorcist III (based on his novel Legion) was a lot better, and served as a more direct follow-up to the 1973 classic.