There’s a particular sound that happens when a horror franchise dies. Not a scream — more like air leaving a balloon. Slow. Embarrassing. You heard it in 2023 when Exorcist: Believer limped out of theaters with a 22% Rotten Tomatoes score and audiences so indifferent they gave it a “C” CinemaScore. That’s not hatred. Hatred would be something. A “C” is just… nothing.
I remember sitting in that theater, surrounded by maybe fifteen people on opening weekend, thinking: this is what $400 million buys you now. A movie that felt like it was made by committee, for no one, about nothing.
So when I tell you that Scarlett Johansson signing on to Mike Flanagan’s Exorcist reboot made me feel something I haven’t felt about this franchise in decades — actual hope — understand that I don’t say that lightly.
The Mess Flanagan Inherited
Let’s be clear about what happened here. Universal and Blumhouse paid Morgan Creek $400 million for the rights to The Exorcist. Four. Hundred. Million. That’s not a typo. That’s a studio betting its quarterly earnings on the assumption that brand recognition alone would print money.
David Gordon Green was supposed to deliver a trilogy. The same David Gordon Green who resurrected Halloween — briefly, messily, but profitably. The plan made sense on paper. The execution was something else entirely.
Believer grossed $137 million worldwide. Sounds okay until you remember the investment. Until you remember that the original 1973 film, adjusted for inflation, made over a billion dollars and got nominated for Best Picture. Until you remember that horror audiences will show up for anything — anything — if you give them a reason to care.
Green called it quits. Smart man. The second and third films were scrapped. And for a while there, the whole thing just sat in development hell, bleeding money, while executives presumably screamed at each other in conference rooms.
Enter Flanagan.
Why Flanagan Is the Only Logical Choice
I’ve written about Mike Flanagan more times than I can count. Hill House. Midnight Mass. Gerald’s Game. Doctor Sleep — which, let’s be honest, had no business being as good as it was. The man took a sequel to The Shining and made it feel necessary. That’s not directing. That’s exorcism.
But here’s the thing about Flanagan that doesn’t get discussed enough: he’s not just good at horror. He’s good at legacy horror. At taking something sacred and finding a way in that doesn’t feel like desecration. Doctor Sleep worked because Flanagan understood he wasn’t competing with Kubrick — he was having a conversation with him. Different thing entirely.
The Exorcist needs that same approach. You can’t remake William Friedkin‘s film. You can’t recapture what Linda Blair and Max von Sydow created in 1973. That movie isn’t just a horror film — it’s a cultural artifact, the first horror movie nominated for Best Picture, a film that made audiences physically ill in theaters and changed what the genre could do.
What you can do is find a different angle. Tell a different story in the same universe. And reportedly, that’s exactly what Flanagan’s doing — a “radical new take” that won’t be a sequel to Believer. Thank God. Or whoever.
The Johansson Factor
Now, about Scarlett.
I’ll confess something: when I first saw the headline, my immediate reaction was skepticism. Johansson in a horror movie? The woman who’s spent the last decade punching aliens in the MCU and running from dinosaurs? What’s she doing here?
Then I remembered Under the Skin. 2013. Jonathan Glazer. Johansson playing an alien in human form, seducing men in Glasgow, shot like a nightmare you can’t wake from. That movie is genuinely unsettling in ways that most mainstream horror doesn’t even attempt. She was good in it. Really good. The kind of good that makes you forget she was ever Black Widow.
And before that — way before — there was Eight Legged Freaks. She was a teenager. It was silly. But still. The woman has horror in her history, even if nobody talks about it.
Flanagan called her “brilliant” in his statement. Said her performances “always feel grounded and real.” That’s the key word: grounded. Flanagan’s horror works because the characters feel like people, not archetypes. If Johansson can bring that same lived-in quality she had in Lost in Translation, that same wounded opacity she had in Under the Skin… maybe. Maybe this works.
The role itself remains a mystery. No plot details. No character name. Just the knowledge that this is supposed to be something new, something that breaks from what came before.
The Production Reality
Here’s where things get complicated. Flanagan was originally set to direct two Exorcist films. Blumhouse announced a March 13, 2026 release date. Then, earlier this summer, that date quietly disappeared from the schedule. No explanation. Just… gone.
Word is Flanagan’s slate got too crowded. He’s been shooting his Carrie series. He just came off The Life of Chuck, which won at TIFF last year. The man is not exactly sitting around waiting for the phone to ring.
With Johansson attached, sources suggest a 2026 shoot is being eyed, which pushes release to 2027. That’s a long time from now. A lot can change. But it also means Flanagan has time to get it right, which is more than Green ever had.
The production team includes Jason Blum, Flanagan himself, and David Robinson from Morgan Creek. Alexandra Magistro and Ryan Turek are executive producing. It’s a solid lineup. The kind of people who understand that horror doesn’t need to be expensive — it needs to be smart.
What Flanagan’s Up Against
Let me be honest about something: The Exorcist franchise is cursed. Not literally — I don’t believe in that stuff — but creatively. It’s been cursed since 1977 when John Boorman made The Heretic and audiences literally laughed it off the screen.
The only sequel that worked was Exorcist III, and that’s because William Peter Blatty — who wrote the original novel — directed it himself and made something weird and personal instead of trying to recapture the first film’s shock value. Brad Dourif’s confession scene in that movie is scarier than anything in Believer. Scarier than most things in modern horror, period.
So the template exists. You can make a good Exorcist sequel. You just can’t make it by chasing what worked before. You have to find your own demon, so to speak.
Flanagan understands this. I think. I hope. The “total creative freedom” he’s reportedly been given suggests Universal learned something from the Green disaster. Maybe.
Or maybe they’re just desperate. When you’re $400 million in the hole and your first attempt bombed, you tend to get flexible real fast.
What This Casting Means for The Exorcist’s Future
Johansson signals serious studio commitment. You don’t attach one of Hollywood’s biggest stars to a franchise you’re planning to bury. Universal is going all-in on this reset.
Flanagan’s “radical new take” suggests total reimagining. This won’t connect to Believer. Good. Let that movie die alone.
The 2027 timeline gives breathing room. No rushing to meet arbitrary release dates. Flanagan can actually develop something worth watching.
Horror legitimacy is rising. Between this, the Carrie series, and his ongoing Stephen King adaptations, Flanagan is building something like a horror empire. The Exorcist fits perfectly.
The Exorcist III template may be in play. Something strange, personal, and willing to break from the original’s possession formula.
FAQ
Can Mike Flanagan actually save The Exorcist franchise after Believer’s disaster?
If anyone can, it’s him. Flanagan’s entire career has been built on taking impossible projects — a Shining sequel, a Hill House adaptation, Gerald’s Game with its unfilmable ending — and making them work. The man has a talent for respecting source material while finding new ways in. But “can” and “will” are different words, and a $400 million debt creates pressure that even the best directors struggle under.
Why is Scarlett Johansson doing a horror movie now?
Because her career has always been weirder than people remember. Under the Skin proved she can do unsettling, interior horror. Lost in Translation proved she can carry melancholy. The MCU years made us forget, but Johansson has range that most blockbuster actors don’t. Plus, horror is respectable now in ways it wasn’t ten years ago. A-listers aren’t slumming when they sign on to prestige horror — they’re making smart bets.
What went wrong with David Gordon Green’s Exorcist: Believer?
Everything, really. The movie tried to manufacture nostalgia by bringing back Ellen Burstyn and referencing the original constantly, but it had nothing new to say. Green’s Halloween trilogy showed the same problem — diminishing returns as the films became more about legacy management than actual storytelling. Believer felt like a contractual obligation, not a creative vision. Audiences can always tell the difference.
Does the Exorcist franchise have any good sequels at all?
Exorcist III. That’s it. And it works precisely because Blatty ignored what made the original commercially successful — the special effects, the shock value, the physical horror — and focused instead on atmosphere, dread, and one genuinely terrifying Brad Dourif performance. If Flanagan is smart, he’s studying that film more than the original.
