Screw it, Scarlett Johansson will star in the latest "radical new take" on The Exorcist

Despite the disappointment of David Gordon Green’s Exorcist: Believer, which was initially poised to anchor an entire Exorcist trilogy, the series remains of the utmost concern to Universal. Lest we forget, the studio shelled out $400 million for the rights to the film series in hopes of turning them into Peacock exclusives. When announced, Green had been riding high on the diminishing returns of his Halloween trilogy, but the underwhelming response to Believer led to his stepping down from its first sequel, Exorcist: Deceiver. Alas, we’ll never know what he was going to do with Exorcist: Retriever, presumably the first movie in the franchise to feature a possessed dog. Still, with The Conjuring couple eating Exorcist‘s lunch for the last decade at the box office, Universal and Blumhouse are itching to get a taste of that sweet, demonically possessed pie.

As noted, the next movie will come from the heart and mind of Mike Flanagan, returning to horror after his whimsical drama, The Life Of Chuck, failed to make an impression on audiences. (The A.V. Club wasn’t impressed with the film’s “insipid sentimentality” either). “The Exorcist is one of the reasons I became a filmmaker,” Flanagan said. However, the director is currently working on another remake of a 70s horror classic about a magically disturbed girl, Carrie. After he adapts Stephen King’s novel into a Prime Video miniseries, he can focus on whatever Regan is spinning her head about these days.