David Gordon Green almost proved he didn’t learn his lesson with Halloween Ends as the stricken sequel to his Exorcist film would have focused on a character other than the cursed father played by Leslie Odom, Jr., and his daughter (Lidya Jewett).
Green would not have reverted either and shifted back to centering on the MacNeils, i.e., Linda Blair and Ellen Burstyn. Instead, he was going to build the movie around the secondary character of Ann, played by Ann Dowd.
In Believer, Ann was a nurse who once had an abortion and tried to become a nun. Also Odom’s neighbor, she gets caught up in the mission to save the souls of his daughter and her friend (Olivia O’Neill).
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In the sequel dubbed Deceiver, Ann’s mission would have gone further and likely taken her to Europe according to Green. “We had our next one written and had it mapped out for the third one,” he said in an IndieWire interview.
“Again, it was ambitious, complicated. We were going to Europe for some pretty extraordinary backdrops. It was one of those things where all of the creative parties got together,” he continued. All the “parties” may have come together but nothing else did.
Believer was a flop and Green’s franchise privileges were revoked, naturally, or so the story goes. Green told IW there was more to it. He adds that a loss of creative freedom was also an issue – and a big one for him. Having that and the ability to do what he wants are everything in his process.
“All I know is, give me some boundaries and let me loose. If there are a lot of people poking me about ideas and thoughts and notes? I’m not [the] best in those environments. It’s just trying to make everybody get what they need,” he explained.
That makes some crazy sense, and could ultimately be why Blumhouse and Universal Studios are trusting Mike Flanagan to deliver on the next one.