This is depressing to hear. I've been a huge fan of many of Schrader's movies. He seemed like an odd choice to direct a fourth Exorcist movie so that really got me interested. This was one of the few movies I was anticipating this year.
Why do I envision this winding up going straight to video.

I consider myself pretty neutral on this topic but my thoughts are, if Morgan Creek fired Paul Schrader then something must have been very wrong with the movie. I find it hard to believe that the execs at MC saw a great film when they watched Schrader's final cut but still insisted in re-shoots with more gore. Just doesn't make sense, especially in recent years when enormous horror blockbusters contain very little gore and a pg-13 rating.

In my opinion, this comes down to the fact that Morgan Creek was expecting a true horror film and something that would really be in the sense of 'The Excorcist', but it appears Paul had another version. A religious adventure of sorts..I'm not sure how to describe it - but every sign points to it not being an actual horror film..

The rumor is that Morgan Creek never even read the script , that they simply bought the film due to the success of the re-release of 'The Excorist'..Normally, I wouldn't believe such a thing, but this is the exception. There is no way they could of read the script and be so surprised at what Paul has delivered them.

Off-topic slighty, but does anyone know how much Paul made or was set to make off this film?

I'll repeat myself...

This is the production company responsible for this crap:

3000 Miles to Graceland (2001)
American Outlaws (2001)
Angel Eyes (2001)
Art of War, The (2000/I)
Bad Moon (1996)
Battlefield Earth
Big Bully (1996)
Chasers (1994)
Chill Factor (1999)
Coupe de Ville (1990)
Crush, The (1993)
Diabolique (1996)
Freejack (1992)
Get Carter (2000)
I'll Be There (2003)
In Crowd, The (2000)
Incognito (1997)
Juwanna Mann (2002)
King and I, The (1999)
Lazarus Child, The (2004)
Major League (1989)
Major League II
Major League: Back to the Minors (1998)
Pacific Heights (1990)
Renegades (1989)
Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991)
Silent Fall (1994)
Soldier (1998)
Stay Tuned (1992)
Trial by Jury (1994)
Two if by Sea (1996)
White Sands (1992)
Wild America (1997)
Wrongfully Accused (1998)
Young Guns (1988)
Young Guns II (1990)

Out of the 50 movies they have produced around 40 of them are pretty bad...Not a good sign.

Blame morgan creek...c'mon already!

I don't believe that Morgan Creek didn't read the script...that is complete ********... even if they are a production company who were trying to ride a wave of interest in the Exorcist, there is no ****ing way in hell they'd pony up the cash without giving the script a read... I mean, it takes 2 hours to read a script.... certainly worth doing to make sure the 40 million you're about to spend is going in the right place....

I've been wary of Schrader for a while... he is very hit and miss... when he hits (Affliction, Auto Focus) he is great, but when he misses...look out. If that report about the cinematography is true, then I'm stunned.... especially because Vittorio Storraro is a brilliant cinematographer.... but it sounds to me like somewhere along the way, this production dropped the ball...and will need a lot of work to be saved...

MATT

I don't know Matt. Did they read the scripts on most of these? :

3000 Miles to Graceland (2001)
American Outlaws (2001)
Angel Eyes (2001)
Art of War, The (2000/I)
Bad Moon (1996)
Battlefield Earth
Big Bully (1996)
Chasers (1994)
Chill Factor (1999)
Coupe de Ville (1990)
Crush, The (1993)
Diabolique (1996)
Freejack (1992)
Get Carter (2000)
I'll Be There (2003)
In Crowd, The (2000)
Incognito (1997)
Juwanna Mann (2002)
King and I, The (1999)
Lazarus Child, The (2004)
Major League (1989)
Major League II
Major League: Back to the Minors (1998)
Pacific Heights (1990)
Renegades (1989)
Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991)
Silent Fall (1994)
Soldier (1998)
Stay Tuned (1992)
Trial by Jury (1994)
Two if by Sea (1996)
White Sands (1992)
Wild America (1997)
Wrongfully Accused (1998)
Young Guns (1988)
Young Guns II (1990)

I blame society.

No! Blame Canada!

No! Blame the Al-Quida. They want you to.

Go watch the original Halloween to find out!

Or could it be that both cases are about killing artistic vision in an attempt to appease a larger audience? Nahhh.....

Any studio that puts out a movie named 'Battlefield Earth' , can't be trusted.

Good Lord! Renny Harlin takes over "Exorcist" prequel !??
 

I know most think this movie should have never been started to begin with. Now, I think most would agree it shouldn't be released at all. From Paul Schrader to Renny freakin' Harlin. Now that's an insult.


From the Hollywood Reporter. Nov. 19, 2003

Scribe Hawley gets calling for 'Exorcist' rewrite

Alexi Hawley has been tapped to do a rewrite on "Exorcist: The Beginning" for Morgan Creek. Hawley steps into the project to do a production polish for director Renny Harlin, who signed on to direct six weeks of reshoots after helmer Paul Schrader exited the prequel over creative differences, sources said. Warner Bros. Pictures is scheduled to release the film next year. Stellan Skarsgard, Gabriel Mann, Clara Bellar and Billy Crawford star from a script by William Wisher Jr. and Caleb Carr. In other Hawley news, the scribe has just signed with Innovative Artists. He recently sold his spec "Chasing Shadows" to Ascendant Pictures and the script "Grimm" to HSI Prods. His other credits include "Nightbird" for MGM and Cheyenne Enterprises, "The Program" for Intermedia and "The Greatest Player That Never Lived" for Miramax Films. He's additionally repped by Lisa Santos at Management and attorney Matt Johnson at Ziffren, Brittenham, Branca, Fischer, Gilbert-Lurie & Stiffelman. (Chris Gardner)

Welcome to a month ago.

Oh good, another pirate story: Cutthroat Catholic.

Sorry smart ass. I didn't see this here or anywhere else before today.

Let's see here..

From bad (prequel being greenlit) > to worse (original director) > to terrible (current director).

:yack:

Thanks for your intelligent input. :rolleyes:

Renny Harlin seems an odd choice as a replacement. Does anyone know the plot of this film?

http://dvdtalk.com/forum/showthread....cist+beginning

their hotly awaited ...xorcist prequel. But Paul Schrader committed sacrilege by offering up a historical, angst-ridden epic instead. Nick Hasted on a Hollywood battle between good and evil
08 August 2003


Paul Schrader is being exorcised. Last week, he handed in his final cut of Exorcist IV: The Beginning, the $45m prequel to William Friedkin's 1973 horror masterpiece, and reaction from its makers Morgan Creek was apoplectic. According to a well-placed source, the studio chiefs waited in vain for the spinning heads and projectile vomiting they believed they had paid for. The trailers now running in US cinemas, comfortingly heavy on iconic scenes and Mike Oldfield music from Friedkin's money-spinner, would have to be pulled. What they were watching instead was some kind of post-colonial period-piece, a moody, intimate examination of faith. What they were watching, in fact, was the script they had paid for, which, rumour has it, they simply hadn't read.

Schrader and the studio are now at loggerheads. They can't sack him, and he won't resign. The option of hauling cast and crew back together for reshoots in its Moroccan location is financially insane. But Morgan Creek are loathe to give Schrader post-production money to finish his film. It seems a classic Hollywood case of greed versus integrity, of money men not realising they're paying for art till it's too late. But then, this film was trouble from the start.

The idea of another Exorcist, after the botched flops of John Boorman's Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977) and original writer William Peter Blatty's The Exorcist III (a Morgan Creek production in 1990) seems bizarre in itself; as a franchise, it's hardly Star Wars. But, somewhere in the studio's bowels, three scripts had been written anyway, before Caleb Carr stumbled on one, and begged to try himself. Carr, a serious novelist, was a man obsessed with the psychology of evil, dark episodes in history, and ethical crises. He was never likely to write a script of strategically placed projectile vomit. Instead, his version of The Exorcist took Max Von Sydow's eponymous hero, Father Lankester Merrin, back to Holland in 1944, when, in Sophie's Choice-style, he is told by the Nazis to pick someone to be shot. In Kenya in 1947, now a missionary with his faith in tatters, he then stumbles on the devil he will face again in 1973. Carr believes this sweeping epic was read and liked by someone at Morgan Creek. But more important, it seems, was the fact that he finished it just as the re-release of the original Exorcist unexpectedly made $25m. The green light was thoughtlessly pressed.

The veteran, if latterly safe, John Frankenheimer was signed to direct, before his sudden death in 2002. Liam Neeson, cast as Father Merrin, then passed as the schedule changed. Paul Schrader, writer of Raging Bull and Taxi Driver, writer-director of Mishima and Affliction, a man whose Calvinist background made him more serious even than Carr about faith, doubt and devils, and who had not made a studio film since the disastrous flop Cat People in 1982, happened to be in Morocco, the film's main location, when Frankenheimer fell ill. For no better reason, he got the job. Soon, Stellan Skarsgard, a regular in Lars von Trier's extremist films, had unexpectedly replaced Neeson as the lead.

Speaking from the set to website www.CountingDown.com, Skarsgård saw the contradictions from the start. "It's a big Hollywood, big-budget movie. But it's directed by Paul Schrader, who's an interesting independent director, and it's being played by me, who normally does weird little films. I don't know if Morgan Creek are being daring or stupid."

Schrader, at least, sounding almost giddy to be back with the big boys, believed he had made his position clear. Rather than compete with a classic, he told www.darkhorizons.com, "you really have to stay away from all the things that people identify with the Friedkin film... turning heads and projectile vomit... the girl on the bed and the throwing of holy water." Instead, this would be part John Ford British-colonials-versus-the-natives adventure, part Indiana Jones action film, part, he grudgingly conceded, "what you would think of as an Exorcist movie, and part the journey of Father Merrin's soul, one of the introspective movies, that are sort of my forte."

"It's not necessary that it has 'Exorcist' in the title," Skarsgård bluntly admitted, "but I believe that Warner Brothers [the film's ultimate backer] is happy to have it there. If a movie is a good one, it doesn't matter what the title is."

Sadly, Morgan Creek seems to think just the opposite. The sudden coincidence of a brand name they had an interest in and box-office success, and the chain-reaction caused by Frankenheimer's death, apparently stampeded them into making any Exorcist film. Unfortunately for them, the one they got was Schrader's, Skarsgard's and Carr's. Read the small print, they say of Hollywood deals; these businessmen didn't even understand the credits on their script's front page. Perhaps, too, they've never seen The Exorcist. Because Schrader's film - however flawed it may be - sounds very much in the adventurous spirit of Friedkin's sombre, slow, spiritually concerned work, hardly an obvious audience-pleaser, even in its more open-minded day.

"It's the film that seriously makes the closest attempt to get back to elements that made the first one so great," co-star Gabriel Mann claimed, before his bosses' own crisis of faith. "[It has] a kind of creeping, growing eeriness that permeates inside you until you realise you're really scared and freaked out." Adds Carr: "Audiences should expect for things not to happen the way they're used to... to think about things that are both scary and mysterious."

Morgan Creek may yet cast Schrader out, and break the back of his film with cuts and splatter. History shows such mutilations - from The Magnificent Ambersons to Heaven's Gate - always flop anyway. They'd be better advised to put the weird creature Schrader has brought back from Africa on the screen. Who knows? It might scare us to death, after all.

This project now has disaster written all over it.

Now!? ;)

Any project where Renny Harlin takes creative control over....I'll pass.

I would just like to know what made the studio think that a director like Renny Harlin can save this project. The only experience he has in the horror genre is from one of the early Nightmare on Elm Street films, and IMO hasn't made a single quality film in his career.

I hate Hollywood

I think they're confusing HORROR films with HORRIFIC films - something Renny Harlin knows a thing or two about... :D

(actually no, I love The Long Kiss Goodnight - and Cliffhanger and Cutthroat Island are both guilty pleasures... but he does seem an odd choice)