Universal opting to spend an eye-watering $400 million solely to secure the distribution rights caught everybody off-guard, but it remains to be seen if that investment proves to be justified ahead of The Exorcist: Believer possessing theaters this weekend.
For one thing, announcing intentions for a trilogy right off the bat is always a risky move regardless of how iconic the IP in question is, with matters hardly being helped by the legacy sequel taking a complete and utter pasting from critics. It doesn’t matter in the slightest whether or not you buy into the conspiracy swirling around the seminal original, a 24 percent approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes at the time of writing isn’t great.
Not only that, but Jason Blum’s all-powerful Blumhouse is releasing another horror movie on the exact same day, which won’t even sniff the inside of a multiplex but is faring infinitely better among critics. Totally Killer – set in the same genre from the same producer and debuting on the same day as Believer – is packing an 82 percent score on the aggregation site at this moment in time, which is a massive 241 percent ahead of the first installment in planned Exorcist revival.
A time traveling, murder mystery, whodunit, slasher with a subversive streak of self-awareness, nobody could have predicted that the unassuming Kiernan Shipka-starrer would blow what’s poised to be at least a half-billion dollar enterprise should the trilogy make it to the finish line out of the water and into the stratosphere in terms of acclaim, but that’s where we find ourselves.
Published: Oct 5, 2023 01:41 am