The Exorcist: Martyrs hands the case to a homicide detective

The Exorcist: Martyrs finally has a trailer, and the first thing it tells you is that Mike Flanagan is not making a possession movie in the usual order. Flanagan and Chiwetel Ejiofor brought the footage to the Blumhouse panel at New York Comic Con on Friday, October 9, as Variety reported, and Universal has the film opening in theaters on March 12, 2027. Scarlett Johansson stars, and she is not playing a mother calling a priest. She is playing a cop.

Collider has the setup. Johansson is Julie Miller, an NYPD homicide detective raising a 12 year old son, Max, played by Jacobi Jupe. Years before the movie starts, she caught a serial killer called Father Sunday, played by John Leguizamo, and then watched him be executed. That should close the file. Fangirlish, writing from the panel room, describes what reopens it: a new run of religious crime scenes that look staged to get Julie's attention. That is as far as I will go on plot. The trailer goes a little further, and you can decide for yourself whether to watch it.

Flanagan did not reach for the 1973 bedroom. He reached for the 1990 case file, and I think that is the smartest thing about this movie so far.

The sequel this one rhymes with

Here is the detail that made me sit up. A detective, a killer who was executed, and a fresh set of murders that look like his work. That is very close to the shape of The Exorcist III, the 1990 sequel William Peter Blatty wrote and directed himself. The franchise history on Wikipedia describes it as the story of detective William Kinderman investigating brutal murders in Georgetown that resemble the method of a serial killer executed around the time of the original exorcism. Screen Rant caught the same echo in the trailer, and also points out that the crime scenes look different from the Gemini Killer's, which suggests Flanagan is borrowing a structure rather than a villain.

I like that a lot, and not just because The Exorcist III is my favorite of the sequels by a wide margin. The detective version of this franchise is the one where dread can build slowly, through paperwork and photographs and a cop who does not want to believe what the evidence says. Flanagan's best work, from Midnight Mass to The Haunting of Hill House, lives in exactly that slow lane. The difference here is personal stakes. Kinderman was investigating. Julie made the original arrest herself, and she has a kid at home. That is a much tighter knot.

Every Exorcist film, and where Martyrs sits

Seven films in, the series has tried almost everything. Here is the lineup, using U.S. release dates from the franchise record and the Variety and Collider reporting for Martyrs.

That last row matters. Variety notes that Universal paid $400 million in 2021 for the rights to a new trilogy, which began with Believer in 2023, and that Flanagan's film will not continue it. Screen Rant adds that Believer's disappointing run is what led to the planned sequels being scrapped. Variety also says Martyrs was first dated for March of this year and slid to 2027 after a production delay. So this is the studio's second swing at the same property inside four years, and it has wisely chosen not to carry the first swing's baggage.

Who is in it

The cast is stacked. Beyond Johansson, Jupe, and Leguizamo, Variety lists Ejiofor, Laurence Fishburne, and Diane Lane, and the panel coverage has Ejiofor playing Father William. Collider adds Sasha Calle plus a long run of Flanagan regulars: Carla Gugino, Kate Siegel, Rahul Kohli, and Hamish Linklater. Screen Rant names Samantha Sloyan too. The official trailer listing credits Flanagan as writer and director, with Jason Blum and David Robinson producing alongside him for Blumhouse Atomic Monster and Morgan Creek, in association with Red Room Pictures.

Flanagan's pitch on stage was blunt. Per Variety, he called it "unlike any other 'Exorcist' movie that's ever been made" and said the team agreed going in that it had to be scary. Every director says that at a convention. The difference is that Flanagan has already done the hardest version of this job once, when Doctor Sleep had to follow both Stephen King and Stanley Kubrick at the same time.

What to watch before March

• The Exorcist (1973). Obvious, but rewatch it as a procedural. Notice how much of it is people talking in kitchens and hallways before anything happens.
• The Exorcist III (1990). The closest thing Martyrs has to a template. If you only make time for one, make it this one.
• Doctor Sleep (2019). Flanagan's last trip into somebody else's famous horror property, and the best argument that he can handle the weight.
• Skip Believer if you are short on time. Collider and Variety both say Martyrs does not pick up its threads.

It has been a good fall for old horror names getting second lives. Saber's game Hellraiser: Revival split the critics this month, and Supermassive is turning another big horror name into a phone ritual with The Conjuring: Unspoken. Martyrs is the one I am most curious about, because it is the only one of the three that seems to know exactly which part of its own history is worth stealing from.

How we made this: researched and drafted with AI assistance. Sources are linked in the piece.