Mike Flanagan's Exorcist Movie Officially Unveils First Look & Story Details

Credit: Esquire Published Oct 6, 2026, 9:37 PM EDT Matthew Rudoy is one of ScreenRant's Movie & TV News Editors. He covers the latest in movie & TV news, with a focus on major franchises like Star Wars, The Boys, and Game of Thrones, and also writes some features and reviews. He wrote lists for ScreenRant from 2017-2022, became a news writer in 2023, a senior staff writer in 2024, and an editor in 2025. Sign in to your ScreenRant account This article covers a developing story. Continue to check back with us as we will be adding more information as it becomes available.The first official look and story details are unveiled for Mike Flanagan's The Exorcist: Martyrs. Flanagan directed and wrote the newest installment in the long-running horror franchise, with a cast led by Scarlett Johansson, Jacobi Jupe, Diane Lane, John Leguizamo, Chiwetel Ejiofor. Filming was confirmed to have started in March and wrapped in June ahead of the March 12, 2027 theatrical release date, but plot and character details have remained under wrapped. Now, the first official teaser has been released ahead of the full trailer debuting at New York Comic Con later this week, which shows Johansson's character T at the top of a set of stairs, then descending as she shines a flashlight into the darkness, Ejiofor as a religious figure in a church, Leguizamo's character about to receive a lethal injection, protesters gathered, and a terrified Jupe crawling backwards. Check out the teaser below: While speaking with Esquire, Flangan shared that Johansson's character is Detective Julie Miller: "She’s a homicide detective with the NYPD and a single mother of a young boy named Max, who’s just turned 12 years old. Because being a homicide detective is one of those jobs that pulls you completely out of your life when you’re on call, you might not come home for days while you’re chasing a case. A lot of the slack is picked up by her own mother, Mary.” He further revealed that “John Leguizamo plays a serial killer who Scarlett apprehends very early in the story, and she’s there to witness his execution, which doesn’t go exactly as they expect it to, which ... yeah, it’s an odd thing to say today." Leguizamo's character goes by the name Father Sunday, and he stages brutal murder scenes that depict Roman Catholic saints being martyred. Flanagan teased that "anyone raised Catholic, and even those who aren’t but have any kind of religious or historical literacy, are going to recognize a lot of that in the trailer, just in the crime scenes that we’re staging. That iconography’s right there.” More to come...