The Exorcist: Martyrs Teaser Revealed as Mike Flanagan Takes the Franchise Into Serial Killer Territory
Mike Flanagan’s new Exorcist movie finally has a name, and we now have a much clearer idea of what he has planned for one of horror’s most famous franchises. Officially titled The Exorcist: Martyrs, the film will combine demonic possession with a serial killer investigation when it arrives in cinemas on March 12, 2027, through Universal. Rather than attempting to recreate William Friedkin’s 1973 classic with another variation on a possessed child trapped inside a bedroom, Flanagan is taking the mythology into crime-thriller territory while remaining firmly within the supernatural world of The Exorcist.
Scarlett Johansson leads the film as Detective Julie Miller, an NYPD homicide detective and single mother whose latest investigation brings her into contact with a serial killer known as Father Sunday, played by John Leguizamo. Julie is raising her 12-year-old son Max, played by Hamnet actor Jacobi Jupe, but her professional and personal worlds look set to collide once the case begins moving into territory that ordinary police work cannot easily explain.
Father Sunday Is Only the Beginning
Julie apprehends Father Sunday early in the story and subsequently witnesses his execution, which would normally seem like a fairly definitive way of closing a murder investigation. Unfortunately, this is an Exorcist movie, so death isn’t necessarily going to be enough to keep evil where it belongs. What begins as a homicide investigation will ultimately collide with demonic possession, giving Flanagan an opportunity to approach the franchise from a considerably different direction.
The set-up immediately brings The Exorcist III to mind. William Peter Blatty’s 1990 sequel also fused supernatural horror with a police investigation involving a serial killer, creating one of the franchise’s most distinctive stories without simply attempting to repeat the original film. Martyrs appears to be exploring similarly unusual territory, although Flanagan has made it clear that he isn’t interested in simply repeating any of the previous films.
There may even be a small nod to the franchise’s history hidden in Johansson’s character name. Julie’s surname is Miller, which naturally recalls Jason Miller, the actor who played Father Damien Karras in The Exorcist and later returned to the role in The Exorcist III. No official confirmation has established that the name is an intentional tribute, however, so for now it remains an interesting coincidence rather than something we can definitively add to the growing pile of Exorcist Easter eggs.
Priests, Possession and a Huge Cast
Johansson is surrounded by an impressive ensemble. Alongside Jacobi Jupe and John Leguizamo, The Exorcist: Martyrs stars Diane Lane, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Sasha Calle and Laurence Fishburne. Ejiofor and Fishburne will both play priests, which seems particularly useful when your murder investigation starts wandering into demonic territory and the NYPD handbook stops being much help.
Flanagan has also assembled what amounts to a reunion of performers from across his previous work. Rahul Kohli, Hamish Linklater, Gil Bellows, Carl Lumbly, Robert Longstreet, Matt Biedel, Samantha Sloyan, Kate Siegel, John Gallagher Jr., Benjamin Pajak and Carla Gugino are all part of the cast. Anyone who has followed Flanagan through projects such as The Haunting of Hill House, Midnight Mass and The Fall of the House of Usher will therefore encounter plenty of familiar faces.
The scale of that ensemble suggests Flanagan is building something considerably broader than a traditional possession story centred entirely around one family and one location. There will still be demonic possession, but the homicide investigation gives Martyrs another route into the material and potentially allows the supernatural threat to spread beyond the confines audiences traditionally associate with an Exorcist movie.
This Isn’t Another Attempt to Remake The Exorcist
Perhaps the most encouraging thing Flanagan has said about the project is that he isn’t trying to manufacture another version of Friedkin’s film. The 1973 original casts an enormous shadow over every subsequent entry in the franchise, and several sequels have wrestled with the problem of how much they should return to familiar characters, imagery and ideas.
“I think the first job is to tell people they’re not seeing a retread of The Exorcist,” Flanagan explained. “They’re not seeing any attempt to reboot or remake or to step into the Friedkin film.” Instead, he describes Martyrs as a new story taking place within the Exorcist universe and one that will take the franchise in a direction audiences haven’t previously seen.
That distinction could be important. The basic concept of possession remains, but placing an NYPD homicide detective at the centre of the story immediately changes the machinery around it. Julie isn’t entering the story as a priest summoned to perform an exorcism or a parent desperately trying to understand what is happening to a child. She’s investigating a killer, watches that killer die and then apparently discovers that the nightmare isn’t finished.
It’s a premise that provides Flanagan with room to explore both human and supernatural evil without abandoning the fundamental ingredients audiences expect from the name The Exorcist. The echoes of The Exorcist III are certainly difficult to ignore, but Martyrs appears determined to establish its own characters, mystery and identity rather than simply resurrecting something audiences have already seen.
With a major cast, a serial killer at the centre of its mystery and Flanagan promising a genuinely different approach to the mythology, The Exorcist: Martyrs has suddenly become a much clearer proposition than the mysterious Exorcist project we’ve been hearing about until now. The title is official, the first footage is here, and the direction of the story is finally beginning to emerge. The film arrives in cinemas on March 12, 2027, and if Flanagan delivers on his promise, this won’t be another attempt to recreate the night Regan MacNeil became possessed. It will be an attempt to discover what else an Exorcist movie can be.
