The Pope’s Exorcist 2 is still reportedly in development and Russell Crowe would like to ride his Vespa again in it.
2023’s The Pope’s Exorcist was a surprise hit at the box office, grossing $77m worldwide with a budget of just $18m. With such a high profit margin, it was no surprise when producer Jeff Katz said in 2024 that a sequel to the demon-fighting Father Gabriele Amorth’s adventure was in development.
We haven’t heard much about said sequel since, but in a recent interview with Screen Rant, star Russell Crowe expressed interest in returning to the role, despite his initial hesitation and dislike of sequels.
“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. 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,” the Gladiator star told the outlet.
“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.”
The Pope’s Exorcist was directed by Julius Avery and Michael Petroni and Evan Spiliotopoulos penned the script based on Amorth’s books An Exorcist Tells His Story and An Exorcist: More Stories. As stated by Crowe, there is plenty of material to base another film on and at one point, a trilogy of these films was planned but that plan seems to have been abandoned now.
Crowe hasn’t appeared in any sequels to his films throughout his career. He did sign up to be part of Universal’s Dark Universe as Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde but that cinematic universe was cancelled before it even properly began after the poor reception of The Mummy in 2017.
Crowe’s words aren’t exactly confirmation that he will return for The Pope’s Exorcist 2 and there’s still no word on who might be writing or directing it, so it’s still very early days. We’ll keep you updated on all things The Pope’s Exorcist 2, though.
