David Gordon Green wishes William Friedkin could have seen Exorcist: Believer
Friedkin—who directed the original Exorcist film in 1973—died this past August
The Exorcist: Believer director David Gordon Green really wanted to go against the old adage and meet his hero, but in this case, it’s probably a good thing that never came to be. William Friedkin, who forever changed the horror genre with his Oscar-nominated “theological thriller” The Exorcist in 1973, died this past August at the age of 87.
“I was looking forward to showing [Friedkin] the film, because I never communicated with him. My understanding was that he didn’t want involvement in the film production, but he would give us his thoughts after the movie,” Green told the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ A.Frame magazine.
Green’s legacyquel—out this Friday–is the first in a trilogy that Universal paid a hefty $400 million for. The thing is… it’s not very good. Green’s stab at recapturing Friedkin’s macabre magic has already raked in a number of terrible reviews and earned a “D” grade from The A.V. Club. “The film is a grab bag of half-baked ideas that never coalesce into a coherent theme or a reason to exist,” Leigh Monson writes.
Still, Green does seem to have made his peace with the fact that Friedkin may not have been totally possessed by his effort. “I was very curious to see what he would think, because I know he has been very critical and was very outspoken, but he was also a brilliant man,” he said. “He didn’t have to love my movie, but I could learn from him, because he made many of my favorite movies.”
Hopefully, Green will return to Friedkin’s source material, which he lauds as being so successful in part because it “doesn’t have those tricks and tropes… so it has never gone out of style,” in advance of the trilogy’s next installment, The Exorcist: Deceiver. Look for that in 2025, if you haven’t been scared off already.
The Exorcist: Believer premieres this Friday in theaters.