Mike Flanagan’s The Exorcist: Martyrs Trailer Reveals a Demonic Bloodline Linking History’s Most Infamous Serial Killers

Mike Flanagan’s next film finally has a trailer. The first full look at The Exorcist: Martyrs dropped online Friday, October 9, after debuting at New York Comic-Con and playing in front of screenings of Other Mommy, giving fans their clearest picture yet of Scarlett Johansson’s entry into horror’s most notorious franchise.

A New Investigation, Not a Remake

The film stars Johansson as Julie Miller, an NYPD homicide detective and single mom who, thirteen years after catching the satanic serial killer known as Father Sunday (John Leguizamo), finds her own name written in an altar boy’s blood. With her rookie partner Gina Restrepo (Sasha Calle) and Father William (Chiwetel Ejiofor), the priest who heard Father Sunday’s final confession before his execution went wrong, Miller uncovers a thread tying together a lineage of real-world serial killers, from H.H. Holmes to the Zodiac, that Universal’s own synopsis warns “could corrupt everything, and everyone, she loves.” The trailer leans hard into crime-thriller territory, trading the 1973 original’s pea soup and spinning heads for something closer to Seven or The Exorcist III, and it never touches the franchise’s familiar “Tubular Bells” theme.

A rare quiet moment for Miller’s family before the demonic bloodline catches up with them.

Who’s In the Cast

Diane Lane plays Miller’s mother, and Jacobi Jupe plays her 12-year-old son, Max, both of whom are pulled into danger as the killings escalate. Laurence Fishburne rounds out the main cast as a priest brought in for his knowledge of ancient rituals, with Carla Gugino, Hamish Linklater, Scoot McNairy, and Carl Lumbly filling out the ensemble. Flanagan wrote and directed the film himself, continuing a busy stretch for the horror filmmaker that also includes this week’s Carrie series for Prime Video.

A Franchise Flanagan Fought to Join

The Exorcist: Martyrs is a new, standalone story rather than a continuation of David Gordon Green’s The Exorcist: Believer. Universal scrapped Green’s planned follow-up, The Exorcist: Deceiver, after he departed the franchise, and brought Flanagan in to start over. Flanagan has been vocal about chasing the project, telling The Hollywood Reporter, “I really just saw an opportunity to make the scariest movie I’ve ever made.” The Exorcist: Martyrs opens in theaters on March 12, 2027.

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Picture Source: Universal Pictures