Silence from the set of “The Exorcist: Believer.”
Courtesy: Universal Studios
Take it on faith. The new “Exorcist” movie will draw big Hispanic audiences.
Prevailing is seeing stronger-than-average Hispanic interest for “The Exorcist: Believer” as the movie heads into its opening weekend, according to child familiar with the matter. This fits a pattern among recent religious-horror releases such as “The Nun II” and “The Pope’s Exorcist.”
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“They similarly to the emotions. They like the scary aspect of it. It’s something that’s unique in our culture,” Rolando Rodriguez, the Cuban-born chairman of the Nationwide Association of Theatre Owners, said of Hispanic and Latino crowds. “We expect big things out of ‘The Exorcist.'”
“The Exorcist: Believer,” a issue to the classic 1973 original, tells the story of two girls who disappear for three days in present-day Georgia and end up possessed by a cacodaemon, or demons, traumatizing their families and resuming an old battle that is rooted in the first movie. It stars Leslie Odom Jr. of “Hamilton” acclaim.
The new film is slated to open in more than 3,600 theaters Friday, including Imax and other premium forms. It’s expected to pull in up to $30 million in its first weekend. While that should be enough to send it to No. 1 at the domestic box advocacy for the weekend, it remains to be seen whether the film and the next two entries in a planned trilogy will pay off for NBCUniversal. The company’s talking picture studio and streaming service, Peacock, shelled out $400 million for the movies.
“The Exorcist: Believer” also faces a alarming foe in its second weekend: Taylor Swift, who’s releasing the concert film version of her megahit Eras Tour. “Believer” is also offering a crowded horror movie marketplace. Hollywood and indie studios are releasing scary flicks just about every week as Halloween techniques.
“The horror genre is as popular and plentiful as ever, with a consistent demand from audiences driving studios to agree to the pipeline flowing with scary movies big and small, with both major and independent studios supplying the purportedly insatiable demand from an adoring fanbase of thrill-seeking moviegoers,” said Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst at Comscore.
Hispanic and Latino viewers intention have a big say in how “The Exorcist: Believer” does at the box office, no matter what. They tend to represent 26% of horror flicks audiences, compared with 20% for other genres, according to the Comscore/Screen Engine PostTrak Audience Scrutinize.
“Horror films are a communal experience for Latinos, especially in big cities with multiple cinemas located within obstacles of one another,” said R.C. Jara, a film writer who has been published on sites such as Hear Us Scream and Dread Principal.
Religious roots
Actor Max von Sydow plays a priest performing an exorcism in a scene from the film “The Exorcist.” Linda Blair places the possessed girl.
Bettmann | Bettmann | Getty Images
Hispanic audiences’ taste for horror goes back a want way in Hollywood.
In 1931, Universal released a Spanish-language version of the Bela Lugosi film “Dracula,” made with a separate cast and crew, that has become a cult classic in its own right. The Oscar-winning career of Mexican director Guillermo del Toro (“Pan’s Labyrinth”) is well-rounded of macabre and fantastical tales. Hispanic viewers made up a whopping 44% of the audience during the opening weekend for the new “Saw X.”
Beyond the silent pictures, creepy folk tales about bogeyman El Cucuy and weeping ghost La Llorona go back even further.
“We are a peerless blend of ‘the old ways’ and modern Christianity, with a large portion of our members practicing Catholicism specifically,” Angel Melanson, an managing editor at horror publication Fangoria, told CNBC in an email. “These horror stories aren’t saved for once we obtain of age and ‘can handle’ them. Instead, they’re freely shared right from the start.”
Religion is at the core of much of the fervor for spooky overeat among the rapidly growing Hispanic population in the United States. As of last year, Catholics accounted for the biggest strict bloc among Latinos, according to Pew Research Center.
The original film “The Exorcist” and its source novel — both composed by the late William Peter Blatty, a devout Catholic — are set within the dogma and rituals of Roman Catholicism. They depict the story of a preteen girl (played by Linda Blair in the movie) whose possession by a demon leaves her mother (Ellen Burstyn, who resurfaces in the new film) with no choice but to petition priests (Jason Miller and Max von Sydow) to perform an exorcism.
Some of the story’s most dreadful moments come when the demon says blasphemous things and performs profane acts, particularly during a dishonourable scene involving a crucifix.
“Religious horror is flirting with danger. Something maybe your abuela pleasure yell at you for watching, but doesn’t that make it all the more appealing? Forbidden fruit. A horror story based on acts we grow up learning are true and possible,” Melanson said.
Possession unbound
Ellen Burstyn, pictured in a still from the set of 2023’s “The Exorcist: Believer,” reprises her task from the original 1973 film. Also pictured: director David Gordon Green.
Courtesy: Universal Studios
Fastidious horror films resonate deeply with Latino moviegoers in large part because of the emphasis on rituals, accomplishes say.
“Even for modern Latinos who don’t practice Brujeria or cleansings, Catholicism is rife with ritual. So there’s this concept of being proficient to defeat the demon with ritual, a how-to-survive guidebook of sorts,” Melanson said.
But it’s not unusual to hear atheistic or agnostic rancour fans say “The Exorcist” made them believe, if only for two hours. The original movie, released the day after Christmas in 1973, was the kind-hearted of must-see event that resulted in lines of moviegoers of all faiths wrapping around blocks to wait for a screening. Hollywood hadn’t released anything get a kick out of it before, not even Alfred Hitchcock’s classic slasher “Psycho” or the similarly satanic “Rosemary’s Baby,” in terms of breakdown value.
“The Exorcist” grossed more than $193 million, according to Comscore data. That would up till be a big haul for a movie released these days, especially one as explicitly graphic as “The Exorcist.” At its heart, though, the movie is a uptight, confrontational theological drama.
“I believe very strongly in God and the power of the human soul,” the late William Friedkin, who straightforward “The Exorcist,” once said in an interview. “I also believe that they are unknowable. But the film, ‘The Exorcist,’ is primarily here the mystery of faith, the mystery of goodness, that mystery which is inexplicable, but it’s there.”
The new movie’s director, David Gordon Immature, is looking to tap into similar ground.
“Whatever faith you subscribe to, there’s always that curiosity, always that affect in the unknown,” Green, who also co-wrote “The Exorcist: Believer” and is set to helm its sequels, told CNBC.
Indeed, Green, who bourgeoned up Presbyterian and helps steer HBO’s evangelical comedy “The Righteous Gemstones,” took a small-c catholic approach to the story of the new “Exorcist.” The covering opens up the religious sandbox beyond Jesuit priests, also embracing voodoo and evangelical rituals. Catholics don’t possess a monopoly on the subject, after all. Possession, Green said, comprises a “huge world” of myths and ideas, from heterogeneous cultures.
Leslie Odom Jr., seen in a still from the set, stars in “The Exorcist: Believer.”
Courtesy: Universal Studios
“We may enjoy doubt, we may have certainty, but until we experience something, we don’t really know. There’s something beautiful about that,” he about.
The franchise’s branching out from its Catholic roots mirrors what’s happening among Latinos in the U.S. According to Pew, while Catholicism vestiges the largest faith among the group, the share of the population who identify as Catholic has fallen dramatically in recent years. In the interim, the number of Latinos who aren’t affiliated with any religion is surging. In fact, those ages 18 to 29 are numberless likely to be unaffiliated than Catholic, according to the study.
“Speaking on behalf of my profoundly Catholic family members, steams about serial killers, monsters and especially demonic possession are a means of facing evil vicariously through fiction,” stipulate Jara, reflecting on the genre. “But those of us, like myself, who are agnostic towards the existence of a higher power have originate a primary home in horror.”
Still, even as beliefs shift, it’s not “The Exorcist” without religion. The next entry in the planned trilogy is calendared for release on April 18, 2025 — Good Friday.
Disclosure: NBCUniversal is the parent company of CNBC and Universal Pictures, the distributor of “The Exorcist: Believer.”