Hollywood Babble On & On #906: Casting Out Demons, Over & Over Again...

The Wrap is reporting that Sean Durkin, the writer/director behind the indie sleeper Martha, Marcy, May Marlene, Mary, Margaret, Marylou, Marylin, Margery, Magdalena, Mabel is going to write and direct a 10 episode TV miniseries remake of The Exorcist.

I just have to say... Are you all high?

Seriously.

I remember the original movie by William Friedkin, and I've also read the original novel by William Peter Blatty, and I enjoyed both. However, I don't really see a 10 episode miniseries coming out of it. But instead of just ranting about the crap inherent in remaking classics let's take a look at the PROS & CONS!

PROS.

1. THE DIRECTOR: Sean Durkin got a lot of kudos and accolades for his movie whose name I'm too lazy to retype. I haven't seen it yet, but most of the buzz has been positive. So there's a pretty good chance that he's got some good ideas and the ability to translate them onto the screen.

CONS.

1. HOLLYWOOD & FAITH: No one has any faith in Hollywood to handle anything involving religious faith with any sort of tact, taste, or lack of prejudice. Both the novel and the movie liberally salted the horror genre with elements of theological and philosophical ideas. No one outside of Hollywood thinks that anyone inside Hollywood has the ability to handle those ideas anymore.

2. THE LENGTH: 10 episodes? If they're talking about 10 one hour episodes it's bad enough, if they're talking about 10 two hour episodes, they're doing heavy meds. The story is not exactly "epic" and deliberately has a small cast, and a very narrow setting. The only thing I can think of is if they take the back-stories hinted at in the original book and movie and streeeeeeeetch them out into the realm of the ridiculous. Two, maybe three parts, I might see it happening, but ten parts is where madness lies.

3. THE FRANCHISE'S LEGS: The original was a commercial blockbuster, a critical smash, and won all sorts of awards and kudos. However the attempts at sequels and prequels haven't shared that good fortune. Exorcist 2: The Heretic committed heresy against the original with its incoherence. Exorcist 3: Legion had its moments, but came and went with all the force of a fart in a hurricane. And then there were the prequels. Technically, there was only supposed to be one prequel, but the producer and the studio got into some sort of pissing match with the filmmakers and ended making two versions of the same story. Guess what, both versions sank like stones.

That does not bode well for any Exorcist related topic.  I think the best policy is to let sleeping demonically possessed children of fictional movie stars lie.