Mike Flanagan's 'Exorcist: Martyrs' Trailer Is Here, and It's Bleak
Scarlett Johansson is holding a crime scene photo with her own name written in an altar boy's blood. That's the opening gut-punch of the first full trailer for "The Exorcist: Martyrs," and it sets the tone for everything that follows: this is not a jump-scare demo reel. It's a slow, dread-soaked procedural with a demon at the bottom of it, and it's the first time Mike Flanagan has ever put his name on the Exorcist franchise.
A Detective, a Dead Case, and a 12-Year-Old Target
Johansson plays Detective Julie Miller, an NYPD homicide investigator who took down a satanic serial killer known as Father Sunday thirteen years ago. The trailer picks up with a new string of murders that trace straight back to that old case — and straight into her own house. Her 12-year-old son Max (Jacobi Jupe) becomes the thing the demonic force actually wants, which turns a cop procedural into something much more personal by the midpoint of the footage.
Diane Lane plays Mary, Julie's mother and Max's grandmother, rounding out a household that's about to be tested from the inside. Sasha Calle plays Julie's partner, Detective Gina Restrepo, pulled into the investigation as it stops looking like a copycat and starts looking like something that was never fully stopped.
Flanagan's Priest Isn't a Hero — He's a Convict
Chiwetel Ejiofor plays Father William, and the first-look images make his introduction clear before the trailer even gets there: he's shot standing at the altar in full vestments, hands open, looking less like comfort and more like a man who knows exactly what he's about to walk back into. The character is described as a former convict turned prison chaplain — not the stock "doubting priest" the franchise has leaned on before, but someone who's already done time for something and is using the church as his own kind of penance.
Laurence Fishburne rounds out the clergy side as Father Nichol, and John Leguizamo plays Rivera — the imprisoned killer known as "Father Sunday," whose murders were staged to mimic the martyrdom of Catholic saints. According to early reporting on the trailer, the investigation widens into a thread connecting multiple real historical killers, including H.H. Holmes and the Zodiac Killer, which is a wildly ambitious swing for a franchise entry to take.
Why This Project Matters
This isn't Flanagan dabbling in someone else's universe for a paycheck — it's his first stab at the Exorcist name after David Gordon Green's planned trilogy stalled out when Green exited the project. Flanagan is coming off directing Prime Video's "Carrie," so horror fans have had back-to-back proof points this fall that he can handle both the domestic-dread side of a story and the theological-horror side without losing either thread. Early trailer coverage describes the tone as "bleak, tense and very, very scary" — a notably darker register than some of his more emotionally soft-focused work.
"The Exorcist: Martyrs" is a Universal Pictures release from Blumhouse–Atomic Monster and Morgan Creek Entertainment, and it's set to open in theaters on March 12, 2027. For a franchise that's been trying to find its footing since 1973, handing the keys to a director who's built his entire career on slow-burn dread and fractured families feels less like a gamble and more like the obvious move nobody made until now.
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