Jason Blum has conjured up quite a few memorable scares in his career, but one thing he doesn’t want to battle is Taylor Swift and her fans.
If you recall, Universal Pictures and Blumhouse landed the coveted Friday, October 13th date for The Exorcist: Believer, perfect for a horror event. But things changed swiftly when Swift’s The Eras Tour concert film was announced for the same day. That left the studio to buckle under the pressure of opening against a major pop music event film and decided to push the release a week earlier.
Speaking to EW, Blum openly admitted the one thing that he knew could exorcise his Exorcist requel would be Taylor Swift.
He tells the outlet, “The one thing that scares me to death is Taylor Swift. We had this amazing Friday the 13th in October, which is the single best day to release a scary movie. Obviously, we moved off that [date], and we bowed our head to Taylor Swift.”
When asked if he felt it could’ve had a Barbenheimer-type situation, Blum didn’t want to risk it and make it feel manufactured. Adding, “It was too risky to see if ‘Exorswift’ was going to take or not. People will still have the Exorswift opportunity, so maybe we got to have our cake and eat it too.”
Since the death of his pregnant wife in a Haitian earthquake 12 years ago, Victor Fielding (Tony winner and Oscar® nominee Leslie Odom, Jr.; One Night in Miami, Hamilton) has raised their daughter, Angela (Lidya Jewett, Good Girls) on his own.
But when Angela and her friend Katherine (newcomer Olivia O’Neill), disappear in the woods, only to return three days later with no memory of what happened to them, it unleashes a chain of events that will force Victor to confront the nadir of evil and, in his terror and desperation, seek out the only person alive who has witnessed anything like it before: Chris MacNeil.
The Exorcist: Believer arrives in cinemas on October 6th in the US and on October 13th in the UK.
Originally published September 30, 2023. Updated October 2, 2023.
