Vulture reports that, nearly 40 years after The Exorcist became the first horror film ever to be nominated for Best Picture, William Peter Blatty’s best seller is in the limelight once again. According to reports, filmmaker Sean Durkin, writer-director of the Elizabeth Olsen thriller Martha Marcy May Marlene, is adapting the classic into a 10-episode television series, backed by Morgan Creek and producer Roy Lee, who brought us movies such as The Departed and The Ring.
Unlike the iconic 1973 William Friedkin film, which starred Ellen Burstyn, Max von Sydow, Lee J. Cobb and “head-turner” Linda Blair, Durkin’s version of The Exorcist follows the events leading up to a possession and how a family copes with it. Then, after medical and psychiatric explanations fail, the desperate family turns to the church, and Father Damien Karras, who’s finally brought in to attempt the exorcism. The Exorcist TV series will be shopped to networks in two weeks, but executives are apparently already inquiring about the new take on the classic horror tale.
Meanwhile, Don Murphy, producer of films such as Transformers and Real Steel, along with Susan Montford’s Angryfilms, are developing their own scripted series dealing with the eviction of unwanted demons, titled The Exorcist Handbook.