First Teaser for Mike Flanagan's ‘The Exorcist: Martyrs’ Is Here — Full Trailer Lands Friday

LOS ANGELES — Universal Pictures and Blumhouse have released the first teaser for Mike Flanagan’s The Exorcist: Martyrs, confirming that the film will open only in theaters on March 12, 2027 — and that the full trailer arrives this Friday, October 9. The teaser, which landed Wednesday via the film’s official channels, is the first moving footage from the production and the first real indication of how Flanagan intends to handle one of horror’s most carefully guarded legacies.

The teaser is a mood piece first and a plot delivery system second. It opens on a woman looming at the top of a staircase — a deliberate, unmistakable echo of the 1973 original’s most iconic location — scored with eerie music that, as Dread Central noted, carries the same dread-soaked feeling as the trailer for Alien. From there the images come fast: a flash of Johansson in character, a priest standing inside a vast church, Leguizamo strapped to an execution table — and a final shot of someone, or something, hanging upside down in a bedroom. It is the kind of image that lodges in your head and refuses to leave, which is exactly what a teaser for an Exorcist film is supposed to do.

There is still no official synopsis — Universal and Blumhouse are holding plot details close — but the shape of the story has emerged through reporting around the production. Johansson plays Julie Miller, an NYPD homicide detective and single mother, who is investigating a series of grisly murders connected to a Satanic serial killer she apprehended years earlier. Leguizamo plays the killer, known as “Father Sunday” — and it is his execution that sets the new wave of killings in motion. According to Dread Central’s breakdown of the first-look materials, Miller witnesses the execution, and things do not go according to plan.

The ensemble around them is stacked. Sasha Calle (The Flash) plays a fellow detective, while Jacobi Jupe (Hamnet) plays Miller’s 12-year-old son — the “single mother” half of Johansson’s role giving the horror its emotional anchor. Chiwetel Ejiofor and Laurence Fishburne play priests who are drawn into the case, and Diane Lane co-stars. The cast also gathers a deep bench of Flanagan regulars — Rahul Kohli, Hamish Linklater, Kate Siegel and Carla Gugino — alongside Gil Bellows, Carl Lumbly, Robert Longstreet, Matt Biedel, Samantha Sloyan and John Gallagher Jr. Esquire debuted the first stills together with an interview with Flanagan, the first time the director has spoken at length about the production.

The casting itself tells a story about the film’s ambitions. Fishburne’s involvement was first reported by Variety, and the pairing of Ejiofor and Fishburne as the film’s priests gives Martyrs a dramatic spine that recalls the original’s two-priest structure — while the story itself pivots to a new center of gravity: a protagonist whose authority comes from a badge rather than a collar. It is a shift in perspective for a franchise built around priests, and it fits Flanagan’s character-first instincts.

The teaser landed via the film’s official channels Wednesday morning, with the @exorcistmartyrs account on X posting the date and the Friday trailer promise. Between Esquire’s stills, the teaser, and Friday’s trailer, Universal and Blumhouse are running a compressed three-beat campaign: intrigue today, the full sell in 48 hours, then the long build to March.

What the campaign is not doing is explaining itself. With no official synopsis and no word on what “Martyrs” refers to, the title is doing heavy lifting — evoking suffering, sacrifice, and the possibility that this story’s horror is as much about what faith costs as what evil does. Flanagan has earned the benefit of the doubt on that kind of thematic ambition: his horror has always been about people first — grief and guilt and love — with the supernatural as the pressure that reveals them. A Satanic serial killer, a detective mother, an execution gone wrong: the pieces are all there for the kind of story he tells best.

One thing the film is not: a continuation of 2023’s The Exorcist: Believer. Reporting on the production has been consistent that Flanagan’s movie is an original story — a fresh start for the franchise rather than the next chapter of the previous trilogy plan. For a series that has been defined, and sometimes weighed down, by its relationship to William Friedkin’s 1973 original, a clean break is arguably the boldest choice available. Flanagan, notably, is writing as well as directing, which means this reboot will carry a single authorial voice from script to screen.

It is also a choice that plays directly to Flanagan’s strengths. The director built his reputation on horror that treats character as the engine and scares as the consequence, and his recent run — including The Life of Chuck — has only sharpened that identity. His Stephen King series Carrie premieres on Prime Video this October, which means Flanagan is about to own the horror conversation on the big screen and the small screen at the same time.

For now, the campaign is following the modern playbook to the letter: a shiver of a teaser today, the full sell on Friday, then five months of slow-burn anticipation. With no official synopsis out, even the meaning of the “Martyrs” subtitle is still under wraps — and in the gap between now and March, that vacuum is going to fill with theories. The March 12 corridor plants the film’s flag early in 2027’s horror calendar, spring counter-programming against the year’s incoming blockbusters. It is shaping up to be a busy stretch at the multiplex — our guide to Avengers: Doomsday covers the other end of the 2027 tentpole spectrum, and this weekend’s box office finals show what horror is up against right now.

The film’s official X account, @exorcistmartyrs, posted the schedule plainly: “Mike Flanagan’s The Exorcist: Martyrs only in theaters March 12. Trailer out this Friday.” Teaser today. Trailer Friday. Theaters March 12, 2027. Horror fans have five months to argue about what the upside-down bedroom shot means.