Mike Flanagan’s Amazon streaming series Carrie might’ve literally just dropped, but the writer-director-showrunner is clearly a busy guy, as the first look debuted for his next project, the theatrical sequel The Exorcist: Martyrs, on almost the exact same date that Carrie released. The first look is a fifteen-second teaser for the actual trailer which is soon to follow, but makes sure to spotlight Flanagan’s involvement as both writer and director, as well as showcase the insanely impressive cast assembled for the film, which stars Scarlett Johansson, Chiwetel Ejiofor, and John Leguizamo, among many others.
This is notable for several reasons. First off, it illustrates that even though audiences haven’t seen or heard much from Flanagan’s camp in the past few years since his previous feature film The Life of Chuck, he has clearly been enormously busy banking projects. Not only did he act as showrunner on Carrie but he also directed half of the episodes himself. Within that same timeframe, he also wrote and directed this new Exorcist sequel, slated for release in March of 2027 (very soon!), and is also still working on adjacent projects such as his upcoming The Mist and Dark Tower adaptations for Amazon, as well as potential further seasons of Carrie. That’s a lot to cram into a relatively short period of time, but its evidently nothing that Flanagan hasn’t become at least somewhat accustomed to; he has spent most of his career bouncing directly from one project to the next and has an obscenely prolific output from the past decade alone as a result.
The other thing that’s interesting about The Exorcist: Martyrs gearing up for proper promotion though is that it was only a few short years ago that audiences went through the gamut of an Exorcist legacy sequel being promoted and released in the form of David Gordon Green’s The Exorcist: Believer. That 2023 film was planned to be the first in a trilogy of films directed by Green for Blumhouse. Blumhouse had acquired the rights to The Exorcist and quickly put plans in place that were remarkably similar to their plans for another horror classic; Halloween. So similar, in fact, that they hired the exact same creative team of David Gordon Green, Danny McBride, and their collaborators to map out a trilogy of sequels, just as they had successfully done for Halloween. However, things went belly-up quickly when the first of those, Believer, debuted to rancid reception and box office failure.
Thus, instead of moving forward with the then-announced Exorcist: Deceiver, Blumhouse scrapped the whole thing in favor of pivoting to a pitch from Flanagan. Ironically, Flanagan was also initially in the running to helm their Halloween films, before the studio decided to go with David Gordon Green’s take on The Shape. So now, Flanagan’s The Exorcist: Martyrs is in the prickly position of needing to financially justify Blumhouse’s investment into this IP and creatively redeem the troubled films in the eyes of audiences.
But, delightfully, these first glimpses clearly paint Martyrs as a very different kind of Exorcist film; one far more indebted to William Peter Blatty’s Exorcist III than it is to the original film, which could provide the breath of fresh air the frequently rehashed series could really use. Keep your eyes peeled for the upcoming full trailer for The Exorcist: Martyrs, which is set to drop soon.
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