The Exorcist with Scarlett Johansson has a title: first teaser

The new film in the saga, by Mike Flanagan, will be called The Exorcist: Martyrs. And the director promises a story of possession which will go beyond the usual framework to transform into an investigation into a serial killer.

The Exorcist changes face.

Universal has just confirmed the title of the new film in the franchise: it will be The Exorcist: Martyrs. And in passing, the studio revealed a particularly worrying first teaser, while waiting for the full trailer this Friday.

The first images already set the tone. The teaser opens with a woman standing still at the top of a staircase, in a shot that obviously recalls the legendary steps from William Friedkin’s original film. The music helps to establish a particularly oppressive atmosphere, while the editing reveals Scarlett Johansson, a priest played by Chiwetel Ejiofor in a huge church or even John Leguizamo attached to an execution table.

Johansson plays Julie Miller, an investigator with the New York Police Department’s homicide squad. She arrests a serial killer nicknamed Father Sunday, played by Leguizamo, before witnessing his execution. But nothing is going to happen as planned.

Sasha Calle plays another investigator, while Jacobi Jupe plays Julie’s 12-year-old son. Chiwetel Ejiofor and Laurence Fishburne play two priests who find themselves drawn into this strange affair.

The director, Mike Flanagan, wants to mix two genres that have never really coexisted in the franchise: the exorcism film and the police investigation surrounding a serial killer.

“How do we explore those ideas in a serial killer thriller, in a way that starts to mix up those subgenres a little bit, taking what we love about a movie like Seven Or The Silence of the Lambs and combining it with what we love in a film like The Exorcist ?“, explains the director to Esquire.

An approach which should also allow the possession to be taken out of its traditional decor. “He still has a role to play, the one that the title imposes on him. We absolutely have to offer that. But I hope it will be more than just a story of possession.”

For Flanagan, the real interest lies precisely in this mixture: “The connections to the mystery surrounding the serial killer are what become really fun and take the possession out of the bedroom, out of the parental pain, and into something much, much bigger.”

And even if The Exorcist: Martyrs is part of the universe of the franchise, the director insists on his independence. “The first thing to do is to make people understand that they are not going to see a new version of The Exorcist. This is not an attempt at a reboot or remake, nor a way of reworking Friedkin’s film.”

The French release of The Exorcist: Martyrs is currently scheduled for March 10, 2027.