‘The Exorcist’ Priest Was Haunted While Filming the Horror Classic. Now His Son Has Directed an Ambitious Satire About a Cursed Remake

variety.com:

William Earl Joshua John Miller and his personal and creative partner, M.A. Fortin, never set out to make a movie about an exorcism because, as Fortin says to Miller, “Your father stars in the greatest one of all time.” Miller’s dad was the actor Jason Miller, who played Father Damien Karras in “The Exorcist.” He often told Joshua stories of the purportedly haunted set, recounting fires that started around the production and the injuries and deaths that would impact those who worked on the film.

That real-life experience was one of the big inspirations for “The Exorcism,” a new movie Joshua directed and co-wrote with Fortin, in which Russell Crowe plays Anthony Miller, an actor portraying a priest in what looks to be a modern “Exorcist” remake while living with his estranged daughter Lee (Ryan Simpkins).

Although the meta parallels are on display — from the father’s problems with alcohol to the family’s last name “Miller” — Joshua and Fortin wanted to use the story as a springboard to cover more ambitious themes. “There was just something about the time and the personal and professional experiences that we’d undergone,” Fortin said. “The language of exorcism movies suddenly felt weirdly compelling to us — the fact that they’re all the same sort of verse, chorus, verse, where the Catholic Cortana is inviolable, perfect and it will save you.

Also, women are always the ones you know who are going to be possessed because they’re receptive — it’s very sexist. “Also, there seems to be a kind of nastiness that has been unleashed, and it seemed at the time specifically that men were the ones who were especially receptive to and susceptible to it,” he continued.