Looking to replicate the present-day Halloween franchise's (albeit mixed) success, Universal and Blumhouse splashed out $400 million on the rights to The Exorcist and let David Gordon Green loose on what was planned as a new trilogy. But then the results for The Exorcist: Believer were more financially and critically horrifying than the film was scary, and Green opted to move on to pastures new. Still intent on making at least one more movie, the studio and production company have now turned to someone who has plenty of experience bringing successful scares to screens: Mike Flanagan.
The writer/director, who has been responsible for the big screen likes of Oculus, Before I Wake and Doctor Sleep and the Netflix terror titles The Haunting Of Hill House, Midnight Mass and The Fall Of The House Of Usher, among others, would reportedly be given free creative rein to do what he wants with The Exorcist: Deceiver, so whether it continues the story of Believer (definite hints were dropped at the end of the film) or goes off on a fresh tangent remains to be seen.
Flanagan, who is in the post-production stage of his latest, Stephen King adaptation The Life Of Chuck, seems like the right person to steady the Exor-ship, though he's usually at his strongest when he's working on something he's built from the ground up.