Few administrators have devoted themselves extra totally to horror within the fashionable period than Mike Flanagan. Primarily in TV (however with occasional forays into movie, like 2019 Stephen King adaptation Physician Sleep), Midnight Mass creator Flanagan has exhibited a dedication to the style that’s genuinely admirable, crafting ghost tales, vampire tales, and different supernatural fare in ways in which don’t skimp on both the scares or the sentiments. Now he’s reportedly in talks to deal with one of many style’s greatest names, one which’s defeated just about each director who’s tried to deal with it for the reason that franchise’s first, seismic outing: The Exorcist.
That is per Deadline (and with no person concerned prepared to remark, so get your grains of salt prepared), however Flanagan is reportedly in talks with Blumhouse and Common to take over the movie franchise, which is fairly deep into “projectile vomiting pea soup throughout itself” territory after the latter studio shelled out a reportedly large quantity for the rights to the collection, solely to stroll away with the decidedly lackluster The Exorcist: Believer. ($170 million on the field workplace, working from what was technically only a $30 million finances, which is fairly good for horror—however with godawful critiques, a ton of up-front prices to chew by means of, and a normal impression of squandering the franchise’s already tarnished identify.) Reception to the movie was dangerous sufficient that director David Gordon Inexperienced, who’d beforehand performed an eye catching, if divisive, remedy of the Halloween franchise together with his current trilogy, felt comfy dipping out on the entire mission again in January, leaving the destiny of the already-scheduled Exorcist: Deceiver unsure.
It’s not new to notice that The Exorcist has defied just about each effort to observe up its unprecedented field workplace success from again in 1973, which noticed it turn into what remains to be probably the most profitable R-rated film of all time, adjusted for inflation. Our former colleague Katie Rife coated the collection exhaustively (sans Believer) again in 2016 with an installment of Run The Collection, highlighting how Paul Schrader, Renny Harlin, and John Boorman all failed, at numerous factors, to create a worthy successor to William Friedkin’s understated masterpiece. (Solely authentic writer William Peter Blatty, adapting his personal unrelated story into 1990 cult favourite Exorcist III, comes out even considerably unscathed.) But when somebody have been going to interrupt the curse—perceive the cautious managing of the true and surreal required to make concern of demonic possession really feel oh-so-lucratively actual for the movie-going viewers—we wouldn’t essentially guess towards Flanagan. (Even when, on a private word, we’d want to see him do a demonic possession story unburdened by the franchise’s baggage, as an alternative.) A much bigger query is perhaps whether or not the person himself needs the gig, although, given what number of cinematic hopes have been dashed towards these explicit rocks already.
