Scarlett Johansson is back in horror, and the first look at Mike Flanagan’s remake of The Exorcist is already out. New set photos show Johansson on city streets with Chiwetel Ejiofor, Sasha Calle, Diane Lane and Jacobi Jupe, giving the clearest public glimpse yet of a project that has stayed mostly hidden.
The photos landed now because this is the first concrete look at Flanagan’s take on one of the most terrifying movies ever made, and it comes with a date: March 12, 2027. For readers searching the Scarlett Johansson Mike Flanagan movie, the draw is simple — a major star with comparatively few horror credits returning to the genre, and a remake of a franchise that still carries heavy expectations.
Johansson’s horror work has been rare. Her best-known genre turns include Eight-Legged Freaks and Under the Skin in 2013, which makes this return notable even before anyone knows who she is playing. Flanagan, meanwhile, has built a reputation around terror in different forms, and his new version of The Exorcist is meant to put a fresh stamp on material that has been revisited many times before.
But the photos do not give away much. The cast is visible, the city setting is visible, and little else is. Plot details are being kept under wraps despite the first-look images, which leaves the biggest question unanswered for now: what this remake is actually trying to be. That restraint matters because the franchise’s recent history has been uneven. The Exorcist: Believer arrived in 2023, drew a 22% approval rating, underperformed at the box office and helped sink the planned follow-up films.
This time, the studio appears to be banking on a cleaner reset rather than another quick sequel chain. The original The Exorcist still sits in the culture as a benchmark for screen terror, and Flanagan’s movie is being positioned against that legacy from the start. For now, though, the most useful fact is the simplest one: Johansson is on set, the remake is real, and the next fixed point is the March 12, 2027 release date.
