Blumhouse founder Jason Blum thinks there is something far more frightening than demons, devils, and the wrath of horror fans. What is it? Opening opposite Taylor Swift of course.
Universal Pictures and Blumhouse had long earmarked out Friday October 13th for their “The Exorcist: Believer” film, the first of a planned trilogy revival of the supernatural horror franchise.
Everything was good to go, even with the actor’s strike reducing any publicity efforts for the film, and then along came Swift’s “The Eras Tour” concert film.
Almost immediately after the Grammy winner announced her concert film was opening on the same day, “Exorcist” fled the slot to a week earlier on October 6th. Speaking with EW, Blum says:
“The one thing that scares me to death is Taylor Swift. We had this amazing Friday the 13th in October, which is the single best day to release a scary movie. Obviously, we moved off that [date] and we bowed our head to Taylor Swift.”
He says he considered the idea of keeping the date and doing his own ‘Barbenheimer’ with ‘Exorswift’, but it was unlikely such a thing would hit with the public:
“It was too risky to see if ‘Exorswift’ was going to take or not. People will still have the Exorswift opportunity, so maybe we got to have our cake and eat it too.”
David Gordon Green helms “The Exorcist: Believer” which sees Ellen Burstyn’s Chris MacNeil from the 1973 original returning to help a young father whose two daughters vanish and then return three days later and seemingly possessed. Leslie Odom Jr., Ann Dowd and Jennifer Nettles co-star.
Meanwhile, AMC Theatres announced it will host a world premiere event of “Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour” on October 11th in Los Angeles.
