Stage Adaptation of Horror Classic The Exorcist in the Works

A stage adaptation of the horror novel and film The Exorcist is in development from producer Ben Sprecher, according to The New York Post. “It’ll try out at L.A.’s Geffen Playhouse—and David Geffen’s producing it with me—next July,” Sprecher said. “John Pielmeier, who wrote Agnes of God, wrote the script and brought it to me.”

Based on a 1971 novel by William Peter Blatty, The Exorcist is best known for William Friedkin’s 1973 film adaptation starring Linda Blair as girl possessed by a demon, Ellen Burstyn as her mother and playwright/actor Jason Miller as the priest who must perform the exorcism. Pielmeier explored supernatural and religious themes in Agnes of God, a 1982 Broadway play which centered on a novice nun (Tony winner Amanda Plummer) who gives birth and insists that the dead child is the result of a virgin conception.

Sprecher is also involved with the forthcoming Broadway premiere of Rebecca, which he told the Post will be budgeted at $16 million. “The Promenade is now a Sephora story,” he says of the former off-Broadway theater on the Upper West Side, “and selling that is what made it possible for me to do Rebecca.