Not everyone is happy with the news this week that Morgan Creek are planning to remake The Exorcist, with the film currently scheduled for a 2021 release. Indeed, some horror fans have been so offended by a reboot of the 1973 classic that they’ve set up a Change.org petition to try and prevent the project from going forward.
OK, so only a small handful of people have signed the protest so far, but it makes sense that fans of the William Friedkin-directed original are angry that a new version is on the way. The main gist of the petition is that The Exorcist is a genre classic, and still one of the scariest pictures ever made. Given that a remake couldn’t match or top the original, the supporters in question instead call for money to be spent on new stories.
The full complaint is as follows:
“The Exorcist is William Friedkin’s masterpiece. It’s a horror classic and one of the scariest movies ever made if not the scariest. The original movie was made in the seventies and is still relevant today. The Exorcist is one of the few movies that did not age, that remained for many of us the reference inspiring many other feature films and filmmakers. We, horror fans, moviegoers, cinephiles, movie buffs do not want or need a remake and this petition is to stop the greedy Hollywood machine for remaking The Exorcist as we all already know that a remake will never equal the original. Stop spending millions in remaking great movies and hire people who can create new original stories instead.”
For us, talk of the new Exorcist movie follows We Got This Covered’s own scoop from earlier this year that a sequel was being developed, possibly as a soft reboot of the first production. In this way, and without much more to go on right now, it may be that the new entry in the franchise isn’t quite a complete retread of the 1970s classic and may instead rely on it only as an inspiration.
Of course, the Exorcist franchise has been through many ups and downs over the years (well, mostly downs, really). 1977’s Exorcist II: The Heretic was terrible enough to pretty much kill the franchise until 1990’s underrated The Exorcist III. However, the mess over the two prequels in the 2000s, and the cancellation of the recent Fox television series, arguably shows how difficult it is to pull off a decent Exorcist story.
At this point, we’d like to be optimistic that the new take on The Exorcist isn’t just a money-grab by Morgan Creek to exploit some classic IP. Even if the final film does turn out to be terrible, however, it wouldn’t take away from the power or the reputation of the 1973 picture, in the same way that the other mostly terrible sequels and prequels haven’t.
What do you think about the new Exorcist movie, though, and would you sign the petition to stop it getting made? As ever, share your thoughts in the comments section down below.