David Gordon Green's Halloween sequel trilogy recently concluded with the divisive Halloween Ends, and the filmmaker has now turned his attention to reviving another classic horror franchise with the first of three new Exorcist movies.
Filming was already underway, but took a brief hiatus in December. Now, cameras are rolling again, and a new lead cast member has joined the production.
Deadline reports that Lidya Jewett (Nightbooks, Black Panther) will star alongside the previously-cast Leslie Odom Jr., Ann Dowd, and Ellen Burstyn, who will reprise the role of Chris MacNeil from William Friedkin's original.
No details on Jewett's character were released, but we'd say there's a good chance she'll play the latest target of Pazuzu's (or whichever demon is involved this time) possession.
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 (Linda 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.
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Mark Cassidy is a writer, photographer, amateur filmmaker, and Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic from Dublin, Ireland.