Having just directed a whole new “Halloween” trilogy, you would think filmmaker David Gordon Green would like a break from horror legacy franchises.
Thus it came as a surprise a while back when it was announced he would next be directing a similar style revival of “The Exorcist” franchise again for Blumhouse Productions.
Speaking with THR recently, Green revealed he actually was considering doing a completely different project before producer Jason Blum offered him the chance to direct the new “Exorcist” which aims to be the first of a new trilogy serving as a direct sequel to the original:
“If anybody’s followed my career, I’m always about left turns. Once I feel comfortable, I’ve got to get out of there and go do something that I don’t know and that is dangerous and vulnerable. That’s the stuff that really appeals to me.
Fortunately, I’ve been able to exercise that through a lot of comedic work on television and some other things I’ve been able to do in between horror projects. But I really did have every intention of saying, ‘I’m going to push pause on horror,’ as much as I love the genre.
It’s been good to me from a creative and financial standpoint, for sure, but it was just time to move on until the perfect property and the perfect idea happened at the same time.”
Part of the appeal for him is that the upcoming film will be “extraordinarily different” from his “Halloween” movies:
“I guess it’s in the subgenre of horror, but dramatically, I’m approaching it very academically. So we’ll see. It’s bringing a lot of the same team together in terms of our makeup and effects team and our cinematographer, but at the same time, we’re bringing in a new group as well to complement and evolve in different ways and to make sure it doesn’t feel redundant or repetitive.”
Green is directing from a screenplay he is co-writing with Scott Teems, Danny McBride, and Peter Sattler while Oscar-winner Ellen Burstyn is returning to the franchise by reprising her iconic role as Chris MacNeil over 40 years since the original film debuted in 1973.
