Fans of The Exorcist might feel their stomachs turn a bit upon learning that Mike Flanagan‘s planned film could take longer to hit theaters than expected.
The filmmaker took to Tumblr to respond to a fan’s question regarding whether his new movie in the franchise was still moving forward. The Hollywood Reporter reported last year that Flanagan would be writing, directing and producing a new project in the Exorcist universe for Universal Pictures that was scheduled for release on March 13, 2026. A cast has not yet been announced.
Flanagan explained in his post that his first priority is his Carrie series for Amazon MGM Studios that adapts Stephen King’s 1974 novel. “Production hasn’t started, we need to finish Carrie first,” Flanagan wrote. “No way it’s coming out next March. Nothing to worry about though.”
On Wednesday, Universal removed the film from its 2026 release calendar and replaced it with an untitled Blumhouse movie.
This new Exorcist feature that hails from Blumhouse and Morgan Creek was announced in May 2024 and will not be a sequel to a previous film in the franchise. This followed Universal shelling out a whopping $400 million in 2021 to land an Exorcist trilogy from director David Gordon Green. The trilogy was scrapped after Green’s The Exorcist: Believer, which hit theaters in 2023, was poorly received by critics and collected $137 million at the box office.
The franchise kicked off with director William Friedkin’s Oscar-winning 1973 horror movie The Exorcist that stars Ellen Burstyn and Max von Sydow. It adapts author William Peter Blatty’s 1971 novel of the same name.
During an interview last year with THR, Flanagan addressed the pressure surrounding his Exorcist film being billed as a radical new take on the property.
“I chased The Exorcist very aggressively because I was convinced I had something that I could add,” he said at the time. “This is an opportunity to do something that I believe has never been done within the franchise — something that honors what came before it but isn’t built on nostalgia. I really just saw an opportunity to make the scariest movie I’ve ever made. I know expectations are high. No one’s more intimidated than I am.”
Flanagan is known for the Netflix series The Fall of the House of Usher and The Haunting of Hill House and for helming features including Doctor Sleep. Neon releases his latest movie, The Life of Chuck, in select theaters Friday.
A version of this story was originally published June 4 at 12:30 p.m.
