Exorcist: Faithful Director David Gordon Green explains how he convinced Ellen Burstyn to return to the hit horror franchise.
Burstyn, 90, played Chris MacNeil in the 1973 original, which earned him an Oscar nomination. Now 50 years later, he’s back to reprise his role in a direct sequel to the original, which Green directed and co-wrote (Halloween is Over).
Green, 48, says he has started recruiting the horror icon to return believer “Before I read the script.”
“It was in the early stages of writing, and regardless of any desire for collaboration, I wanted to introduce myself and say: ‘I’m stepping into the legacy of a franchise that you are a monumental part of, and I want you to know who I am, and I’m here to respect that property, the intellectual property, and the character you’ve created. I want you to know that I am,” Green tells PEOPLE.
“And when I thought about what I wanted to do with Chris MacNeil and how I wanted to reintroduce this character, I had a few phone calls,” he adds. “And frankly he’s pretty skeptical at this point because people have asked him dozens of times to come back to the franchise.”
Anne Marie Fox/Universal Pictures
Exorcist: Faithful It is about single father Victor (Leslie Odom Jr.), whose daughter Angela (Lidya Jewett) and her friend get lost in the woods and return three days later without remembering what happened to them. Searching for answers, Victor searches for MacNeil, who was forever changed by what happened to his daughter fifty years ago.
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Green says that when he and Burstyn were mulling the idea of a comeback, he “enjoyed my quirky sense of humor, and there were conversations about everything from movies to personal development to places in the world that mean something to us.”
“And when he read the draft of the script and saw my intention, he realized that in a way it reflected his journey in this world following the success of the film. Cinci – “It’s the world I was trying to create with the character of Chris MacNeil after the events of Georgetown,” he tells PEOPLE. “So there was a familiarity.”
Green also promises more exorcist Sequels are on the way, and he tells PEOPLE: “I’ve envisioned a trilogy, and we’ll see how far I can take it.”
Exorcist: Faithful It hits theaters on October 6th. Watch the video of Burstyn’s comeback above. Spiritualist franchise