There’s plenty that’s new in The Exorcist: Believer: for one, dual possessions involving two different families. The latest trailer, however, begins by looking back to the past.
It opens with Ellen Burstyn’s Chris MacNeil confronting a demon who’s possessed a young girl named Katherine (played by Olivia Marcum), just like one possessed her daughter, Linda Blair’s Regan, in The Exorcist. And the trailer hints that this might not just be any demon, but the very one that took over Regan as MacNeil says, “we’ve met before.”
Although it’s not been confirmed whether or not Regan will appear in The Exorcist: Believer, what comes next definitely assures that she’ll at least be top of mind in the sequel. The demon asks MacNeil, “are you looking for Regan?” before yelling “Regan burns in hell!”
Well, yikes. You can watch the trailer below.
Regan has, of course, appeared in plenty of other Exorcist franchise installments, but Believer is a direct sequel to the 1973 original, meaning it could come up with any number of things to happen to the character after she’s exorcized in the William Friedkin classic. Believer comes from director David Gordon Green, who took the same approach to rebooting the Halloween franchise in 2018. Believer is the first of a planned trilogy, also like Green’s Halloween reboot.
Green recently told IGN that Burstyn’s return was a big reason why he even took on Believer, teasing that he had “an idea I was really passionate about for her character 50 years later to collaborate on.”
“What I was really moved by was the mother-daughter story and bringing that up to speed, up to date, and bringing Chris MacNeil back after so many years,” he said at the time.
In addition to the callbacks, the new trailer gives us a fresh look at that aforementioned dual possession, with a glimpse at the other demon victim, Angela (Lidya Jewett). Leslie Odom Jr. plays her father, while Jennifer Nettles and Norbert Leo Butz play Katherine’s troubled parents.
Today’s trailer and poster are also the first to tout The Exorcist: Believer’s new date of Oct. 6, as it was recently bumped up a week to avoid clashing with Taylor Swift’s concert film, according to producer Jason Blum.
Alex Stedman is a Senior News Editor with IGN, overseeing entertainment reporting. When she’s not writing or editing, you can find her reading fantasy novels or playing Dungeons & Dragons.
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