Horror legend Mike Flanagan has begun filming his take on The Exorcist, the holy fool.
Production has begun on whatever horror maestro Mike Flanagan’s take on The Exorcist turns out to be. The man behind The Haunting Of Hill House, Midnight Mass, The Fall Of The House Of Usher, and plenty more made the now traditional first day slate post on Instagram:
Principal photography began in New York City on March 13, with Michael Fimognari as the cinematographer. While almost no plot details have come to light as yet, we do know that Scarlett Johansson stars as a mother, while Jacobi Jupe (Hamnet) plays her son, so at first sniff we may be going back to basics here. John Leguizamo, Laurence Fishburne, Chiwetel Ejiofor, and Sasha Calle co-star.
Flanagan has also cast a lot of familiar faces from his earlier body of work, including Carla Gugino, Rahul Kohli, Hamish Linklater, Carl Lumbly, Samantha Sloyan, Kate Siegel, John Gallagher Jr., Robert Longstreet, Gil Bellows, Matt Biedel and Benjamin Pajak. Interestingly, this might be the largest principal cast on an Exorcist flick, or at least up there: they tend to be fairly self-contained affairs, by and large.
How it’s all going to turn out is anyone’s guess, of course. I really like Mike Flanagan as a filmmaker; I’ve been watching his stuff since his very first feature, the underrated (and definitely underseen) Absentia, and it’s pretty much unarguable that he’s one of the greatest horror creators currently working – a genuine genre superstar.
Buuuut…
It’s The Exorcist, man, and the absolute best outcome you can hope for is “second best film in the series”, and that’s if you manage to knock it out of the park. And even then, it just means a lot of online arguments with The Exorcist III loyalists. Hope for the best, as ever, but this feels like a real Hail Mary to me.
The Exorcist is scheduled to be released on March 12, 2027 by Universal Pictures.
