Scarlett Johansson is an NYPD homicide detective, and the serial killer at the center of her case is played by John Leguizamo. That is the official setup for Mike Flanagan’s The Exorcist: Martyrs, revealed Tuesday night in a first look from Esquire, and the film’s first teaser is out alongside it. Universal and Blumhouse open The Exorcist: Martyrs in theaters on March 12, 2027.
The Killer Is Called Father Sunday
Johansson’s detective works a case that ends with the execution of a serial killer named Father Sunday, Leguizamo’s character. The execution does not go according to plan, and that brings in two priests, played by Chiwetel Ejiofor and Laurence Fishburne. Sasha Calle plays a fellow detective, and Jacobi Jupe (Hamnet) plays Johansson’s 12-year-old son.
The killer’s name, the two priests and the 12-year-old son all match the character breakdown that leaked in September, which iHorror reported as an unconfirmed rumor at the time.
Flanagan Built It as a Serial-Killer Thriller
Speaking to Esquire, Flanagan described the film as a crime procedural that combines “what we love about a movie like Se7en or The Silence of the Lambs” with “what we love about a movie like The Exorcist.” He said the film still has to deliver a possession, and that the serial-killer mystery is what “takes the possession out of the bedroom and out of parental torment and into something much, much bigger.” He also called it a standalone story within the Exorcist universe, not a reboot or remake of William Friedkin’s 1973 film.
The detective-and-executed-killer setup has a precedent in the series. William Peter Blatty’s own The Exorcist III (1990) put Lt. William Kinderman on the trail of the Gemini Killer, a murderer executed in the electric chair whose killings start again after his death.
The Cast Is Full of Flanagan Regulars
Diane Lane also stars, and the ensemble includes Carla Gugino, Kate Siegel, Rahul Kohli, Samantha Sloyan, Hamish Linklater, Carl Lumbly and John Gallagher Jr. Flanagan wrote and directed the film, which shot in New York City from March to June of this year for Blumhouse, Atomic Monster, Morgan Creek and Red Room Pictures, with Jason Blum producing.
Flanagan came aboard in 2024, when Universal and Blumhouse billed his film as a radical new take on the franchise, set in the Exorcist universe but not a sequel to 2023’s The Exorcist: Believer. Martyrs is the seventh film in the series.