‘The Exorcist: Believer’ Filmmaker David Gordon Green Talks Taylor Swift, Tea Time with Ellen Burstyn and What He’s Directing Next

As he was finishing up his Halloween sequel trilogy, David Gordon Green was ready to take another left turn in a career full of left turns, but then Jason Blum tempted him with the idea of giving The Exorcist (1973) its own sequel trilogy treatment.

In 2021, Universal and Peacock reportedly paid $400 million for the rights to the storied horror franchise that the late great William Friedkin kicked off alongside Ellen Burstyn, Linda Blair, Jason Miller and Max von Sydow. Green’s legacy sequel revolves around the parents of two possessed teenage girls (Lidya Jewett and Olivia O’Neill), as they turn to Chris MacNeil (Burstyn) for help in dealing with the demonic foe that took control of her now-estranged daughter, Regan (Linda Blair), in the 1973 film.

Green currently has outlines for the next two chapters of his Exorcist sequel trilogy, and while he once had plans to co-write and direct all three chapters, he’s not quite ready to say if he’s definitely directing April 2025’s The Exorcist: Deceiver or the eventual trilogy capper.

“My intention is just to start making things, and as those plans come together, if I find myself in that [The Exorcist: Deceiver] director’s chair, I’d be thrilled,” Green says.” But right now, I’m navigating it from a story perspective and looking at my realities of life as I pivot.”

Green finished his direct sequel to Friedkin’s Oscar-winning classic just two-and-a-half weeks ago, and prior to the latter’s August passing, Green fully intended to invite Friedkin to a screening. The late filmmaker, who won the best director Oscar for The French Connection (1971), wasn’t shy about his lack of enthusiasm for the franchise-ification of his 1973 film, so Green admits that it would’ve been a formidable experience.

“Like so many people, Ellen Burstyn included, I know that there was skepticism at the beginning of this undertaking, but I was excited to show it to [Friedkin],” Green says. “As it came together, I found myself more and more proud of what we’d done … And so it’s disappointing that I don’t get to expose myself in that way, which would, no joke, be really intimidating. But I was ready to have that conversation and I was ready to invite him to experience this if he was up for it.”

Like the previous Exorcist sequels and many films in the horror genre, Believer hasn’t connected with critics, but it’s tracking for a solid opening weekend that could be as high as $30 million.

Below, during a recent conversation with THR, Green first discusses having to change release dates because of Taylor Swift‘s concert film, Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour. Then he reflects on sharing cups of tea with Burstyn and what her first reaction was to a particular Believer scene that is bound to get a major reaction out of audiences.

So you probably liked the idea of a Friday the 13th release date, but not enough to take on the mighty force known as the Swifties. Was that last-minute swerve one of the more bizarre phone calls you’ve received as a director?

It was just funny. I was tracking it in New York that morning, and everybody was pretty excited about it. Everybody thought it was a cool way to get some energy, but then we saw the reality of what it was doing to IMAX screens and a lot of our ambitions of how to present this movie big and loud. And then we thought, “You know what? Let’s look at what had cleared out in the previous weekend. Maybe we should jump off that Friday the 13th sweet spot and try to carve ourselves out a little bit more breathing room.” But we still have that Friday the 13th weekend as a follow-up, which I think is a great, great opportunity. I can’t anticipate how the movie is going to really be received, but I do have ambitions of this movie being something that will speak to a similar audience in a strange, perverse kind of way. From the vast number of Taylor Swift fans that I know of, I do feel like there is a crossover and a connection and an appreciation that serves both projects.

As you were finishing up your Halloween trilogy, you wanted to take another left turn after that job. So you weren’t enamored with the idea at first of taking on another classic horror franchise in The Exorcist, but that quickly changed. What was the first element to spark your intrigue? 

Like so many things, once you hear something, you need to process it and sleep on the idea of what could be a daunting undertaking. Tackling a new chapter in an internationally known and acclaimed franchise could be really daunting, but I looked at it as an opportunity to bring to the surface meaningful and personal storytelling and the independent-minded dramatic work that I spent a lot of my career doing and finding very modest commercial response to. This was a way to take a franchise of this magnitude and bring something that has an intimate thread through it all.

If you look at the original film, sure, it’s one of the scariest movies ever made and arguably the greatest horror film ever made. But it’s also a portrait of a priest struggling with identity and faith. It’s a portrait of a mother struggling with uncertainty involving her child. These are themes that I find relatable, and I’ve explored some of these issues in much of the dramatic work I’ve done. So this is a way that I can disguise some of the conversations I’ve had about my own spirituality and make subversive content under the umbrella of this enormously appealing franchise title. 

I like that this film unites a number of different religions and belief systems in order to address the problem at hand. I didn’t get the sense that you were treating one faith as more valid than the other, and I think that’s important since religions are often pitted against each other. Was that universality one of the pillars of the project? 

Yeah, it was. It’s something that I see in my daily life, in my community and in my travels. People assume that they have different perspectives because of their culture, their upbringing, their religious foundation or politics. But when you get to the core of what those intentions are — and the meaning and the real importance and suggestions of that belief — it is, very often, a really universal construct. And so this is a movie about unity. It’s about the coming together of these different philosophies and fighting toward a common goal. 

We lost The Exorcist (1973) director William Friedkin recently, and while he made it no secret how he felt about previous Exorcist sequels, did you get a chance to reach out to him?

I never connected with him on this movie, but I was excited to show him the end result. Like so many people, Ellen Burstyn included, I know that there was skepticism at the beginning of this undertaking, but I was excited to show it to him. As it came together, I found myself more and more proud of what we’d done, and I was finding the threads that I had been inspired by in his film were really realized in our own film and sequel to his work. And so it’s disappointing that I don’t get to expose myself in that way, which would, no joke, be really intimidating. But I was ready to have that conversation and I was ready to invite him to experience this if he was up for it. I’m also looking forward to seeing the movie he just made [The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial].

The Star Wars sequel trilogy received a lot of criticism for not having a detailed plan for all three movies, but many of our best trilogies, including the original Star Wars trilogy, weren’t rigidly planned out ahead of time. So now that you’ve completed one trilogy and have embarked on this one, how pre-planned do you think a trilogy should be at this rate? 

Well, you’re talking to the least rigid filmmaker in town. Every time I have a plan, it’s just a matter of stepping confidently into the arena, and then it’s about intuition, improvisation, opportunity, and these things that come to light. So I have a roadmap of what I’d like to do with this trilogy and some themes I’d like to tackle and some philosophies I’d like to explore. I just finished the movie a week and a half ago, so I haven’t really processed the experience behind this creation and I don’t think I will until the movie has been released. So then I’ll process it, take a deep breath and see how much of my original instincts and ideas apply to where we could go with this. And then I’ll take it from there. But I am far from rigid. I like to keep things loose. I’m always evolving with my creative collaborators, particularly my actors and actresses in front of the camera and bringing their ideas and authenticity to the stage I’m trying to create. 

Are you still hoping to direct all three Exorcist sequels? 

(Green pauses for a moment.) I think hope is … My intention is just to start making things, and as those plans come together, if I find myself in that [The Exorcist: Deceiver] director’s chair, I’d be thrilled. But right now, I’m navigating it from a story perspective and looking at my realities of life as I pivot. And one of the things that’s been really great between these horror franchises is doing that comedy series on HBO, The Righteous Gemstones. So it’s fun to be able to step away, take a deep breath, have a big laugh, and then get back to work in the genre.

So I heard you and Ellen Burstyn have become tea party friends.

Let’s have a tea party! Anytime she invites you over to her house for tea, I say accept that offer because there’s insights and wisdom and a lot of laughs to be had. Yeah, we’ve had tea a couple of times, but not a party. I haven’t thrown down with her in that way, but I always appreciate sitting down with her. Our talks go deep. They go into her life experience and her story, which is vast and inspiring, and we have a lot to learn from her. If you haven’t read her autobiography [Lessons in Becoming Myself], you should. It’s moving and often funny. So I sit with her and hear her voice, which has been in my head since I was a kid. I grew up watching her movies, and now I get to sit alongside her, collaborate, come up with ideas and swap literature. We often share books that she’s read. She’ll give me a call and say, “You’ve got to check this out.” Or I’ll send her something that I’ve picked up and think she might find interesting. She’s a Hollywood legend and icon, and so it’s fun that we’ve become collaborators and struck up quite a friendship.

[Writer’s Note: The next answer does not necessarily contain a spoiler, but if you’ve yet to see Exorcist: Believer, you may want to tread lightly.]

Without saying what happens, Chris MacNeil (Burstyn) is involved in a pretty insane scene in The Exorcist: Believer. What was Ellen’s first reaction to it?

Her first reaction was when I was pitching her the idea. It was before I shared the script with her, and I was talking her through the arc of the character. And during the moment you’re referring to, she said, “Stop, David. You’re not going to kill Chris MacNeil, are you?” (Laughs.) So take it from there, but that was a fun dialogue in the middle of my pitch to her.

The Bob Odenkirk yearbook photo of this movie is that dangling photo of Linda Blair from Sarah T. – Portrait of a Teenage Alcoholic (1975 TV Movie). How did that still wind up in this movie? [Writer’s Note: In Halloween Kills, Green and co. couldn’t get clearance for a photo of the Bob character in Halloween (1978), so they used a high school yearbook photo of Bob Odenkirk instead.]

(Laughs.) How did you know that? That’s crazy, but awesome. There are very limited photos of Linda through the ages that we could clear and say who shot this photograph. For our legal clearances, we needed to be able to point to the photographer, and so we had a very small selection of photos of her that we could actually get the sign-off from the photographer. And that was one of them! So I thought it looked great, but that is a perceptive insight you’ve had.

When you began the process of casting the film’s two teenage girls, I have to imagine that you needed to see tapes of everyone playing demonically possessed. Were those some dark days as you and your team sifted through all those options?

Well, that’s what you would’ve gotten if you said that you were casting for an Exorcist movie. But we said, “We are a movie called Brainwaves and we’re casting for a movie about illness.” And so we were looking for the ailment perspective rather than just someone retreading what they would interpret through cinema history as a possession look. So we took a little bit of a roundabout way to explore some of those initial auditions. And then, once we found people that we knew we were interested in, we sat down with the girls and their parents and said, “This is an Exorcist movie. Would you be interested in taking this journey with us?” So we found Lidya [Jewett] and Olivia [O’Neill], who are just incredible. They come from great families and have wonderful intuitions, and we subjected them to a lot of hours in the makeup chair and a lot of grueling prosthetics and emotion. But then we had Linda Blair there as a consultant on how to protect them and challenge them in ways that were healthy for them and the outcome of our film. So one of the actually fun elements of making this movie was taking these very authentic, genuine, loving young ladies and turning them into demons.

So the last thing you probably want to do is brainstorm even more about the Halloween franchise, but with the film and TV rights apparently being bid on right now, is it time to give the anthology-type approach another shot a la Halloween III: Season of the Witch?

I don’t know. I haven’t thought about it too much. I know there’s the big convention [Halloween: 45 Years Of Terror] this [now-past] weekend, which is very cool. Any opportunity to celebrate Halloween and the franchise and all the various paths that it has taken over the years is exciting. I honestly haven’t spent three minutes thinking about what I would do more. I feel like I’ve told my stories and traveled that journey, but I’m excited to see what people do with it. Malek Akkad and Trancas Films are such fun friends of mine, and I know that they’ll do something interesting. I’m always challenging them to do the unexpected, and they seem supportive of creative and innovative ways to look at their franchise.

To follow up on where we left off previously, you have now released five films since Jeff Nichols’ last release in 2016, but The Bikeriders is finally within reach. Have you seen it yet? [Writer’s Note: Green and Nichols have been friends since attending North Carolina School of the Arts in the late ‘90s.]

(Laughs.) I have seen it, and it’s awesome. It’s great. Jeff did a great job, and it’s fun to get him back in the ring. Audiences are going to be really excited in December when it comes out.

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The Exorcist: Believer is now playing in movie theaters. This interview was edited for length and clarity.