‘The Pope’s Exorcist’: Alex Essoe & Daniel Zovatto Join Russell Crowe In Supernatural Thriller From Screen Gems

EXCLUSIVE: Alex Essoe (Midnight Mass) and Daniel Zovatto (Station Eleven) will join Academy Award winner Russell Crowe in the Julius Avery-directed supernatural thriller The Pope’s Exorcist for Screen Gems.

The film will have Crowe play Father Gabriele Amorth, the legendary Italian priest who performed over 100,000 exorcisms for the Vatican—drawing on his international bestselling memoirs An Exorcist Tells His Story and An Exorcist: More Stories. (Father Amorth, who died in 2016, left behind a trove of additional accounts of his exploits pulling the devil out of people all over the world. Screen Gems acquired his life rights for the project, along with rights to his memoirs.) Details as to the roles Essoe and Zovatto will be playing have not been disclosed.

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The Pope’s Exorcist has been gestating at Screen Gems for a number of years, with Ángel Gómez having previously been attached to direct as of 2020. Evan Spiliotopoulos wrote the current draft of the script, with revisions by Chuck MacLean, which is based on Michael Petroni-revised original drafts by Chester Hastings & R. Dean McCreary. Doug Belgrad of 2.0 Entertainment will produce along with Michael Patrick Kaczmarek for Jesus & Mary, Jeff Katz of Worldwide Katz and Loyola Productions President Eddie Siebert, with Scott Strauss, Michael Bitar and Giselle Johnson overseeing the project for Screen Gems.

Essoe is best known for her collaborations with Mike Flanagan on Netflix’s acclaimed supernatural horror series Midnight Mass, and on his The Shining sequel Doctor Sleep for Warner Bros., which had her playing Wendy Torrance. She broke out with her leading role in the indie Starry Eyes and will next be seen in the indie thriller Trim Season.

Zovatto can currently be seen on HBO Max’s Station Eleven and has also appeared on series like Penny Dreadful: City of Angels and Here and Now. Notable film credits include Greta Gerwig’s Lady Bird, Drake Doremus’ Newness, Fede Alvarez’s Don’t Breathe, David Robert Mitchell’s It Follows, and the late Lynn Shelton’s Laggies.

Essoe is represented by Aperture Entertainment, Red Management in Canada and Brecheen Feldman Breimer; Zovatto by CAA, Luber Roklin Entertainment and Jackoway Austen Tyerman.

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