Blumhouse and Universals The exorcist: believer has started its box office run with $2.85 million in Thursday previews at the domestic box office.
The David Gordon Green-directed horror film premiered exactly 50 years after the first Exorcist visit theaters.
Green and Blumhouse hope they can reinvent the world Exorcist brand, just like they did with the Halloween franchise. There’s plenty at stake Universal reportedly paid a whopping $400 million for the rights to the franchise in 2021 (two more). Believer are already planned).
Exorcist believer plans to open to $30 million to $35 million domestically, but it remains to be seen whether poor word of mouth will spoil the R-rated project (its critic score on Rotten Tomatoes is an abysmal 20 percent) . The film will also premiere in more than 40 international markets this weekend.
It’s hardly unusual for that Exorcist movies to leave reviewers unimpressed. The franchise may have launched with William Friedkin’s critically acclaimed 1973 classic, but none of the four previous sequels received much acclaim.
For the first time since the 1973 film, Ellen Burstyn reprises her iconic role as Chris MacNeil, an actress forever changed by what happened to her daughter Regan five decades earlier.
The film centers on Victor Fielding (Leslie Odom Jr.), whose daughter (Lidya Jewett) and her friend (Olivia Marcum) become possessed.
