Universal Has Spent $400 Million For New ‘The Exorcist’ Trilogy Which Will Feature Leslie Odom Jr. & Ellen Burstyn ( Photo Credit – Facebook ; IMDb )
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Universal Pictures, being one of the biggest production companies in the entire world, has time and again spend big bucks to acquire rights to movies. At the same time, the company has also been signing up deals with streamins services like Netflix and Amazon to release the films they have acquired.
As per a recent report, the studio has acquired worldwide rights to the 1973 film The Exorcist for a whopping $400 million. Read on to know more details about the project.
As reported by Variety, Universal has paid a whopping $400 million to acquire the worldwide rights to the 1973 film The Exorcist in a partnership with Blumhouse and Morgan Creek Productions. The film production company has set its eyes on making a trilogy that will star Leslie Odom Jr.
The new trilogy will also see Ellen Burstyn reprise her Oscar-nominated role as Chris MacNeil from earlier films. Odom is set to play the role of a father who tracks down MacNeil after his child becomes possessed.
The director of The Exorcist trilogy will be David Gordon Green. He has also previously worked on horror movies and rebooting them. His last work with the studio was the 2018 ‘Halloween’ reboot. He will also serve as an executive producer and reportedly direct a few episodes of the forthcoming Hellraiser series.
The huge amount for buying the rights to The Exorcist reflects a recent trend where companies spend hundreds of millions of dollars to get films or simple IP for putting them on streaming services. In turn, this will hopefully attract more subscribers.
Recently, Netflix spent over $400 million on the two sequels of Knives Out. It will be directed by Rian Johnson and will have Daniel Craig as detective Benoit Blanc. Amazon has also bought Coming to 2 America from Paramount for $125 million in October last year.
New York Times released an article that explained that these high prices are meant to cover the amount that is usually reserved for back-end payments, which are received through box-office performances. The first film from ‘The Exorcist’ Trilogy is slated for a theatrical release on 13th October 2023 and the next installments will go straight to the streaming service Peacock.
