A risky half-billion dollar investment that got off to a rocky start at the box office is heading for streaming after just 18 days in theaters

It goes without saying that by tasking David Gordon Green to oversee a trilogy of legacy sequels that ignore the decades-long canon of an iconic horror franchise to tell a new story featuring some familiar faces, Universal was hoping the Halloween effect would capture lightning in a bottle for a second time with The Exorcist: Believer.

However, that hasn’t been the case, which might even be putting a little lightly. After almost a week in theaters, the global box office for the supernatural successor to William Friedkin’s all-time classic still hasn’t matched what Gordon Green’s Halloween made in its domestic opening weekend back in 2018, and Believer was a much, much, much larger investment.

The studio paid $400 million simply to acquire the rights to the property, so when you factor in the production budgets along with additional marketing and distribution costs, the trio of new Exorcist stories will easily set the company back upwards of half a billion dollars by the time all is said and done.

And yet, an underwhelming theatrical debut and a pitiful 23 percent Rotten Tomatoes score has already placed it in an uphill battle, with Believer‘s chances of commercial success potentially poised to take another massive hit. According to When to Stream, Believer will hit digital and VOD on Oct. 24, less than three weeks out from its Oct. 6 arrival at the multiplex.

While it’s sure to be a huge hit among at-home audiences given its proximity to Halloween, it’s hard to shake the thought that the reinvention couldn’t have gotten off to a worse start.