Laurence Fishburne has joined the cast of Mike Flanagan's The Exorcist reboot, adding serious gravitas to what's shaping up to be Hollywood's most ambitious attempt to revive a cursed franchise.
The Matrix star joins an already stacked ensemble including Scarlett Johansson, Jacobi Jupe, Diane Lane, and Chiwetel Ejiofor. This is the cast you assemble when you're not just making another horror sequel—you're trying to erase the memory of 2023's catastrophic Exorcist: Believer, which earned a dismal 22% on Rotten Tomatoes and killed Universal's plans for a trilogy before the paint was dry.
If anyone can pull off this resurrection, it's Flanagan. The man turned The Haunting of Hill House into prestige horror television and made Midnight Mass genuinely disturbing while also being about faith and mortality. He understands that horror works best when it has something to say—a lesson the 2023 version spectacularly missed.
According to Variety, production details remain under wraps, but insiders suggest Flanagan is returning to the original William Friedkin film's DNA: slow-burn psychological terror rather than jump-scare theatrics.
Fishburne's casting is particularly inspired. He brings the kind of weathered authority that made Max von Sydow's Father Merrin so memorable in the 1973 original. Whether he's playing a priest, detective, or skeptical academic, Fishburne commands the screen in ways that make CGI possession effects feel earned rather than gratuitous.
The question isn't whether Flanagan will make a competent Exorcist movie—it's whether audiences will show up after being burned so recently. Hollywood has a nasty habit of mining beloved IP until there's nothing left but resentment and diminishing returns.
But here's the thing: Flanagan has never made a bad project. Not one. His track record suggests this won't just be good—it might actually justify its existence. And in an era of unnecessary reboots, that's practically miraculous.
In Hollywood, nobody knows anything—except when Mike Flanagan is involved, you should probably pay attention.
