Exorcist Series Drops Trailer, Swears It Won't Be A Remake

Don’t listen too hard for Tubular Bells in The Exorcist TV series.

We probably won’t be hearing much “Tubular Bells” and Captain Howdy might not put in an appearance in the upcoming Fox series based on the 1973 classic The Exorcist.

“Have you ever heard of exorcism? It's a stylized ritual in which rabbis or priests try to drive out the so-called invading spirit,” the original William Friedkin film asked. “It's pretty much discarded these days, except by the Catholics who keep it in the closet as a sort of embarrassment.”

It’s not that the producers of The Exorcist series are embarrassed though. The producers told the summer 2016 Television Critics Association press tour journalists that the new series will be homage but not a remake.

“If you watch the pilot, you’ll see that we have some… homages to some of the famous moments [from the film]. You’ll see there’s a scene where they reference the original exorcisms in Georgetown,” executive producer Jeremy Slater said. “That’s our way of letting fans know that the story you love isn’t being written out of existence. [But] this is a new story with new characters that takes place in the same universe as the original film.”

“There have been 40 years of inferior [Exorcist] imitations coming along to dilute the source material, but luckily we have a lot of horror fans behind the scenes, so we can point out, ‘Yes, that’s been done before,'” he added. “It’s a blessing and a curse, because it forces you to be better writers and creators. It forces you to come up with new scares and new ways to creep people out.”

“The problem with all the sequels is that they were trying to duplicate the beats of the original film,” said Slater. “We’re conscious of that: We can’t retell the same story. We can only make a show that you haven’t seen before with new characters.”

“I think The Exorcist 3 gets a bad rap,” Slater said. “Is it as good as the original, no, because nothing is as good as the original. The problem with the sequels is that the sequels tried to duplicate the beats of the original film. We can’t retell the same story. We can’t remake the same show you’ve seen before. The only way you can succeed is telling a new story with new characters.”

The producers also talked about the limitations of the small screen.

“We’re learning a lot about what you can and can’t accomplish on a TV budget,” Slater said. “You have to be very judicious and smart about when you use your scares — you don’t want to numb the audience. … The audience knows the horror is coming, and as long as their patience is rewarded, the pressure is to tell the best story possible, not to tell the most shocking or gratuitous story possible.”

“This time around, evil has grander ambitions than targeting an eight-year-old girl in Georgetown,” Slater said. “You need the propulsive twists and turns, and we have plenty of big plot twists, but at the end of the day, it’s always going to be about a family in trouble and the priests brought in to help them.”

The Exorcist series is set in Chicago, 40 years after the Georgetown exorcisms. The series will be an original story.

“It was important to let everyone know that this is a continuation of an existing story,” Slater said. “Those acknowledgements are in the first episode, and they’re there in part to indicate that decades have passed, and audience members should not expect Fathers Karras and Merrin to ‘show up’ at the home of the Rance family, whose plight occupies much of the ten-episode first season.”

“Evil has grander ambitions than targeting one girl in Georgetown,” Slater also said.

The cast and producers want to maintain the realistic atmosphere of The Exorcist, which stems from Friedkin’s prior experiences directing documentary films.

“If you look at the original, Friedkin — by way of his background and the films he was making at this time and coming from documentary filmmaking — approached the subject matter as an agnostic, a non-believer. The subsequent films were more in the style of the genre,” executive producer Rupert Wyatt, who is directing the pilot, said.

And that means the scares will be based in reality.

“I believe there is evil in the world and we have certainly seen instances of it historically, and currently,” Geena Davis, who plays Angela Rance, said. “I think everyone is capable of an extreme range of behaviors, depending on what you’re exposed to and what your character can resist.”

Here is the official synopsis:

“The Exorcist is a propulsive psychological thriller following two very different priests tackling one family’s case of horrifying demonic possession. Father Tomas Ortega (Alfonso Herrera) is the new face of the Catholic Church: progressive, ambitious, and compassionate. He runs a small but loyal parish in the suburbs of Chicago. He has no idea that his quiet life is about to change forever.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the world, another priest finds himself locked in a life-and-death struggle with evil. Father Marcus Brennan (Ben Daniels) is a modern-day Templar Knight, an orphan raised since childhood by the Vatican to wage war against its enemies. Father Marcus is everything Father Tomas is not: relentless, abrasive, and utterly consumed by his sacred mission.
Caught in the middle is the Rance family, members of Tomas’ parish. On the surface they’re a normal, suburban family, but all is not as it seems in this household. The patriarch, Henry Rance (guest star Alan Ruck), is slowly but surely losing his mind. Eldest daughter Katherine (Brianne Howey) has become a recluse who refuses to leave her room. Her younger sister, Casey (Hannah Kasulka), thinks she’s hearing strange noises coming from inside the walls. And mother Angela (Academy Award and Golden Globe winner Geena Davis) has been plagued by recurring nightmares, each more frightening than the last. Angela believes there is something in the house, a demonic presence, growing stronger by the day. Desperate, she begs Father Tomas for help, unwittingly setting the naïve young priest on a collision course with Father Marcus. Separately, each faces an insurmountable task, but together they become the only hope against an evil force that has been mobilizing for centuries.

The producers warned audiences not to strain their ears for Mike Oldfield’s Tubular Bells,” the theme of the original 1973 The Exorcist.

“I don’t think you’ll be hearing it too many times in the future because it costs a fair chunk of change every time it shows up,” according to executive producer and director Rupert Wyatt. “But that doesn’t mean that we won’t be hearing it; it’ll just be used tastefully and when the budget allows for it.”

The movie only used the opening piano solo for the William Friedkin film. Mike Oldfield was 19 when he recorded Tubular Bells, and 20, when it came out on May 25, 1973 as Richard Branson's Virgin Records’ first album. Prog rocker Oldfield played more than twenty different instruments in the recording. Oldfield who also played guitar on Robert Wyatt’s album Rock Bottom, the following year, followed up Tubular Bells with the two-movement piece Hergest Ridge, solidifying himself as an orchestral rock master. He practically invented new age music.

Oldfield rearranged segments from Tubular Bells for a segment about the National Health Service for the opening ceremony of the 2012 Summer Olympics. This rendition appears on the soundtrack album, Isles of Wonder, and is included on the official BBC DVD release.

The piece was also orchestrated by David Bedford for The Orchestral Tubular Bells album version and had three sequels: Tubular Bells II from 1992, Tubular Bells III from 1998 and The Millennium Bell from 1999.

A sneak peak trailer for The Exorcist was dropped to coincide with th 2016 Television Critics Association press tour. You can see the trailer here: