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Writer Damien Chazelle Set to Script a Sequel to 'The Last Exorcism'

by Ethan Anderton
August 22, 2011
Source: Heat Vision

After the film came together with a modest budget of just $1.6 million, Lionsgate was surely pleased to see their found-footage horror thriller The Last Exorcism turn quite a profit by raking in over $67 million at the worldwide box office. That kind of bank makes a sequel pretty much inevitable, so it's no surprise that Heat Vision the producers are moving forward with a follow-up to the film with up-and-coming writer Damien Chazelle writing the script. No director is currently attached to the sequel, but financing has already been rounded up from Studio Canal and production is already slated to being this fall.

The first film focused on an Evangelical preacher (Patrick Fabian) who, after years of performing exorcisms, decides to allow a documentary crew to film the last exorcism he plans to perform, in order to show his work is a fraud. There's no word on what focus the sequel might take, and while I'd like to venture a guess, I'd rather not spoil the ending for anyone who hasn't seen the film. As for Chazelle's involvement, the writer has proven to be a hot commodity with a script appearing on the 2010 Black List, not to mention selling a recent spec script called Grand Pianoto Adrian Guerra, producer of Buried.

In addition, the writer saw his senior thesis, a musical called Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench turned into a feature that played at Tribeca in 2009. It sounds like he has talent on the page in many different arenas, and this sounds like it could be a big boost to his career to allow for more scripts from him down the road. Of course, despite the fact that the sequel to Paranormal Activity delivered a decent continuance of the story, follow-ups to found footage films always leave me skeptical, but I'm willing to see where the story goes.

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