Major breaking news will have your head spinning.
Universal Pictures has teamed up with Peacock to close a $400 million-plus “megadeal” to buy a new Exorcist trilogy, reports The New York Times.
“Donna Langley, the film studio’s chairwoman, teamed with Peacock, NBCUniversal’s fledgling streaming service, to make the purchase, which is expected to be announced this week, according to three people briefed on the matter. These people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the still-private deal, said the price was in the vicinity of the $465 million that Netflix paid in March for two sequels to the 2019 whodunit Knives Out.
“I’m telling you that ‘thing’ upstairs isn’t my daughter.”
In more surprising news, Oscar-winner
As for story details, “Odom Jr. will play the father of a possessed child. Desperate for help, he tracks down Ms. Burstyn’s character.”
Blumhouse is producing with Morgan Creek Entertainment.
The first film in the trilogy is expected to arrive in theaters in late 2023, adds the site. “Under the terms of the deal, the second and third films could debut on Peacock, according to one of the people briefed on the matter.”
Rob Zombie’s The Munsters is also rumored to be a Universal/Peacock co-production.
The Exorcist franchise hasn’t been on the big screen since the 2005 release of Dominion: Prequel to The Exorcist, an alternate version of the previous year’s Exorcist: The Beginning. Those films came in the wake of 1977’s The Exorcist II: The Heretic and 1990’s The Exorcist III.
More recently, “The Exorcist” became a short-lived television series at Fox, which was surprisingly excellent and cleverly took place in the same world as the original classic.
Pictured: Ellen Burstyn in The Exorcist