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‘The Exorcist’ TV Series Moving Forward With New Cast [Video]

By Nick Younker
Published on: 10:21 PST, Mar 9, 2016

The Exorcist is the one movie title that strikes fear into the hearts of millions of people around the world. The book and subsequent movie turned out to be one of the biggest success stories in all of horror film history, still holding records to this day, nearly 43 years after its original release.

As a matter of fact, The Exorcist was so successful during its first run in theaters that there have been sequels, spin-offs, and prequels that have tried to replicate its success, with no real positive results.

Now, Fox network is about to bring The Exorcist back for a new generation of young audiences to share in the fearful story that made people in the original theatrical run vomit, pass out, and even have miscarriages.

Deadline reports that The Exorcist TV series is moving forward and has officially cast its female lead for the show. Geena Davis, who is perhaps most well known for her roles in Thelma and Louise and A League of Their Own, has been cast to take top billing on the TV series, opposite two other male leads.

The Exorcist TV series is going to take a non-traditional approach to reinventing the story by changing the names of the characters and using other elements that were not part of the original book and film. As many already know, The Exorcist was written by William Peter Blatty and directed by William Friedkin. The film took Blatty’s source material and remained mostly true to it, with a few exceptions.

In The Exorcist TV series, the story follows two priests, Father Tomas Ortega (Alfonso Herrera) and Father Marcus Lang (Ben Daniels), who have to undergo the challenge of rising up against the demon that afflicts, presumably a small child, and cast it out. But there will be certain circumstances attached to the story that were not inherent to the original novel.

It can only be assumed at this point that Davis will be playing the mother role to the child, but she has been renamed Angela Rance. The description of Rance is very similar to that of Chris MacNeil from the original The Exorcist, which was played by Ellen Burstyn in 1973.

Rance has been described as stressed, but naturally beautiful. She is also independent, proud, and weighted down by her role in life. But she has also been characterized as a woman of faith, which is quite different than MacNeil from The Exorcist 1973. That woman did not get any faith until the 11th hour, and even then she was bursting at the seams to find another logical explanation.

MacNeil, however, was a fiercely independent woman who also happened to be a movie star and she was only living in that house in Washington D.C. while filming a movie on location. It wasn’t until her daughter Regan opened up the Ouija board and started playing with it that the demon Pazuzu started to take over her body.

Fans and critics of the movie would all agree that the scare factor of The Exorcist, although it was quite tremendous, is not what gave the film so much notoriety. It was rather the shock factor that gave audiences such a disturbing and enigmatic cinematic experience. Just consider the time period, 1973, and it shouldn’t come as a surprise to you that a girl vomiting green bile, peeing herself in front of an audience, and stabbing herself with a crucifix in her private parts could make such a huge controversy.

The Exorcist certainly did all that and even more. But it is unlikely that it will have that same shock value, considering it will air on broadcast network Fox, where the FCC has jurisdiction over content.

There has been no word yet as to when The Exorcist will premiere on Fox.

[Image via Warner Bros.]

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