The supernatural thriller The Pope’s Exorcist has been available to watch through Vudu, Fandango’s premium on-demand video service, since the start of this month. The film has now been given a wider digital release (you can check it out on Amazon at THIS LINK), and is set to reach DVD and Blu-ray on June 13th.
A few years ago, The Exorcist director William Friedkin made a documentary about Father Gabriele Amorth (and you can read our review of The Devil and Father Amorth at THIS LINK), who passed away in 2016 at the age of 91. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Screen Gems acquired the rights to tell the story of the exorcist’s life from Michael Patrick Kaczmarek and faith-based media company Loyola Productions. That deal included rights to Amorth’s two international bestselling memoirs An Exorcist Tells His Story and An Exorcist: More Stories, as well as other “detailed accounts of his exploits of pulling the devil out of people all over the world.”
For The Pope’s Exorcist, Russell Crowe takes on the role of real-life figure Father Gabriele Amorth, a priest who acted as chief exorcist of the Vatican and who performed more than 100,000 exorcisms in his lifetime. Amorth wrote two memoirs and detailed his experiences battling Satan and demons that had clutched people in their evil.
The film reaches digital, DVD, and Blu-ray with the following bonus features: Introducing Father Amorth and What Possessed You?
Overlord‘s Julius Avery directed The Pope’s Exorcist from a screenplay by Evan Spiliotopoulos, with revisions by Chuck MacLean. The script was based on original drafts by Chester Hastings & R. Dean McCreary, which received revisions from Michael Petroni.
Crowe is joined in the cast by Alex Essoe, Daniel Zovatto, Laurel Marsden, Cornell S. John, and newcomer Peter DeSouza-Feighoney, with Franco Nero, star of the original Django, as the Pope. Ralph Ineson provides the voice of a demon.
Scott Strauss, Michael Bitar, and Giselle Johnson oversaw the project for Screen Gems. The film was produced by Michael Patrick Kaczmarek through his company Jesus & Mary, Loyola president Eddie Siebert, Doug Belgrad of 2.0 Entertainment, and Jeff Katz of Worldwide Katz.
A sequel to The Pope’s Exorcist is now in development.
Will you be buying The Pope’s Exorcist on digital, DVD, or Blu-ray? Let us know by leaving a comment below – and if you have already watched the movie, let us know what you thought of it!
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