There won’t be a “big” summer release next Friday, unless you count “The Exorcism,” starring Russell Crowe, as a potential sleeper hit. I wouldn’t bank on it. This film has quite the backstory.
Firstly, we should acknowledge how Crowe seems really keen in doing films about exorcisms. Last year saw the release of his ill-reviewed “The Pope’s Exorcist,” and this past April it was announced that the Crowe-starring “The Exorcism” would be getting a very last-minute theatrical bow in mid-June.
In “The Exorcism,” Crowe stars as a "troubled actor" shooting a supernatural horror film. As production progresses, his daughter is worried whether he’s "slipping back into past addictions" – or if there’s something more sinister beneath the surface. Must be the latter.
“The Exorcism,” directed by Joshua John Miller, was going to get dumped on streaming before it was acquired by Vertical from Miramax. Additional casting includes Sam Worthington, Chloe Bailey, Adam Goldberg and David Hyde Pierce.
The film, originally titled “The Georgetown Project,” was shot in November 2019 and wrapped in December of that year. What I’m hearing is that Miramax didn’t like the finished product so much that they, originally, committed to some real heavy duty reshoots in the spring of 2020, but the start of COVID delayed and then shut down those plans.
The result is that “The Exorcism” has been in post-production hell for the better part of four years. Its own director, Miller, even admitted that he didn’t believe the film would ever be completed. That is, until last year, four years after production began, and spurred by the success of Crowe’s “The Pope’s Exorcist,” that they finally decided to get the whole gang of actors back together for the extensive reshoots. Additional photography occurred in Los Angeles, New York and Australia. These reshoots included newly written scenes, additional actors and, in some instances, different on-set crew members.
Post-reshoots, Miller had to retool much of the film from scratch. Final cut was finally reached in February 2024. However, Miramax still wasn’t convinced by the film’s prospects and decided, in a last-minute deal, to sell it to Vertical for a cheap price. This is when it was decided that, given this year’s strike-ridden summer schedule, it was maybe a good opportunity to have it open theatrically instead of the originally intended straight to PVOD plan.
Hoping to bank on the recent surge of religious horror films, like Crowe’s own “The Pope’s Exorcist,” not to mention “The Exorcist Believer”, “Prey for the Devil”, “The First Omen”, and “Immaculate,” Vertical decided to retitle the film as “The Exorcism.”
No surprise, just six days away from being released, there is currently no press screening scheduled for “The Exorcism” in New York and L.A. and maybe that could change in the coming days. Regardless, you rarely come across a film that was shot four years apart. The producers can also thank the success of last year’s “The Pope’s Exorcist” because if it weren’t for that film, and Crowe starring in it, I don’t believe “The Exorcism” would have ever had those reshoots and been completed for release.