Mike Flanagan’s Exorcist ‘Isn’t a Remake’

Mike Flanagan. Photo: Getty Images

Like a possessed girl spewing bile, Mike Flanagan is feeling “nauseous” about his version of The Exorcist and he spilled at New York Comic Con. On day two October 19, podcaster Josh Horowitz conducted a live episode of Happy Sad Confused with Flanagan, his frequent collaborators Kate Siegel (also his real-life spouse), Carla Gugino, and Rahul Kohli. To keep his insides in check, Flanagan is taking a straightforward approach to the franchise: “My goal is to make the scariest movie I’ve ever made, and trying to make something that scares the shit out of me.”

“The Exorcist is one of those movies that was incredibly formative for me,” Flanagan told Horowitz and the filled-to-capacity room. “I saw it too young and it fucked me up. They’ve made so many sequels, prequels, and none have come close. You can’t do The Exorcist. There’s no point in remaking it. There’s no point in trying to do that story again or better than the way it was done. So you have to do something new. And you have to do something that rhymes with it and that harmonizes with it, but that isn’t trying to replace it.”

Not a musical, as the panelists joked, but Flanagan did throw in jazz hands. The new Exorcist will be “a completely new thing.” “It’s not a retread,” he continued. “It’s not a remake. It’s not an update.”

That being said, Flanagan’s closely studying William Friedkin’s stone-cold classic from 1973, but also – hold for cheers – The Exorcist III. “It has some ideas that I think are just ripe to be explored further. And I love that movie. It has the best jump scare maybe in cinematic history. That hallway sequence in the hospital is so fucking astonishing if you haven’t seen it.”

There’s still time – Flanagan’s deadline for the script is November 1. Halloween candy’s not going to help the belly ache.