Russell Crowe is a highly acclaimed actor, having scored a number of Oscar nominations and picking up the Best Actor Oscar for his work in Gladiator. Despite his decades-long career, there weren’t many horror projects on his resume, which is what made his work in The Pope’s Exorcist so exciting before anyone even got to see it. Add to that the very meme-able image of the actor in full religious garb zipping around on a Vespa, and the project earned a lot of attention heading into release. Despite earning only 51% positive reviews on aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes, the movie went on to make $77 million worldwide on a relatively modest reported budget of $18 million.
Given that the movie was based on real-life case files, producer Jeff Katz confirmed in 2024 that a sequel was in the works. In a new interview with Screen Rant, Crowe himself teased that he was still interested in the project, though didn’t offer much more concrete information than that. During the conversation, he expressed his initial apprehension towards sequels and how his opinion has started to come around.
“It definitely was conscious for the first 20 or 30 years because I grew up in an era where a sequel was always a really bad version of the first one, where the same thoughts and processes and love and focus and attention hadn’t been paid,” Crowe shared with the outlet. “They were just looking at it as a financial situation: ‘The brand is out there. There’s an audience for it. Make another one.’ So it was always negative, but that’s since changed dramatically, where some of the sequels have gone on to be iconic or legendary over and above the original film. So, yeah, I’m not as closed to it now as I was.”
He added, “There are certain characters where I’ve been approached about a sequel, like Gabriele Amorth in The Pope’s Exorcist. They want to do another one of those, and that’s such a rich character who wrote 12 books about his experiences, and we’ve only just scratched the surface. So that would be interesting to do.”
At one point, there were even talks of doing a trilogy based on the character, so knowing that Crowe is at least open to returning for another installment is exciting. Whether or not the creative forces necessary to make another installment will actually be able to make another movie happen is yet to be seen.
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