Father Gabriele Amorth was a Catholic priest and a real-life exorcist of the Diocese of Rome who claimed to have performed tens of thousands of exorcisms throughout his life. His name raised big notoriety when he was the subject of the documentary The Devil and Father Amorth (2017) by William Friedkin, the one and only director of the most important movie in the subgenre, The Exorcist (1973). The documentary followed Father Amorth as he performs his ninth exorcism on an Italian woman.
Allegedly, Father Gabriele Amorth performed more than 100,000 exorcisms in his lifetime before he passed away in 2016 at the age of 91. He wrote two memoirs, An Exorcist Tells His Story and An Exorcist: More Stories, which detailed his experiences battling Satan and demons that had clutched people in their evil.
The figure of Father Amorth has inspired the supernatural horror and thriller movie The Pope’s Exorcist (2023) where Russell Crowe incarnates the priest.
Julius Avery, a multi-awards-winner filmmaker with his short film Jerrycan (2008) and also the director of the action Son of a Gun (2014), horror Overlord (2018), and fantasy Samaritan (2022) is the director of The Pope’s Exorcist (2023). Michael Petroni (Queen of the Damned (2002), Possession (2009), The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (2010), The Rite (2011), The Book Thief (2013), and Backtrack (2015)) and Evan Spiliotopoulos (Hercules (2014), The Huntsman: Winter’s War (2016), Beauty and the Beast (2017), Charlie’s Angels (2019), The Unholy (2021), and Snake Eyes (2021)), are the writers of the screenplay from a story by R. Dean McCreary.
With Russell Crowe, Franco Nero, Alex Essoe, Daniel Zovatto, Paloma Bloyd, Laurel Marsden, Cornell John, Derek Carroll, Peter DeSouza-Feighoney, River Hawkins, Pablo Raybould, and Ralph Ineson as the voice of the demon complete the main cast.
The Pope’s Exorcist (2023) is Rated R for violent content, language, sexual references, and some nudity. The filming took place from August to October 2022 in Dublin and Limerick, Ireland. The movie is scheduled to be released on April 2023, by Sony Pictures Releasing.
Watch the first official trailer for The Pope’s Exorcist (2023).
