Following a critical shrug-of-the-shoulders prior to release (read our review ★★ here), audiences still felt compelled to turn out for Universal and Blumhouse’s The Exorcist: Believer, which easily levitated to the top of the box-office with a $27.2 million domestic opening weekend.
The David Gordon Green-directed legacy sequel opened at the lower end of projections, but still got close to recouping its $30 million budget in one foul swoop. Success has to be tempered by the fact that Universal reportedly paid $400 million for rights, and next weekend the Taylor Swift concert movie is expected to possess the box-office charts with a record-breaking debut for her The Eras Tour.
Internationally the film scared $17.9 million from punter’s pockets, for a so-so global start of $45.1 million.
Opening 50 years after William Friedkin’s genre-defining horror earned $441 million at the global box-office, Universal and Blumhouse will hoping Believer has enough scares in the tank to carry it through to the Halloween, because two further sequels are planned, with the The Exorcist: Deceiver set to hit theaters in 2025.
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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 (Ellen Burstyn).
Source – BoxOfficeMojo
