By Matt Grobar
Film Reporter
Russell Crowe (Thor: Love and Thunder) has signed on to star in Julius Avery’s film The Pope’s Exorcist for Screen Gems, Deadline can confirm.
The supernatural thriller will have the Academy Award winner 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.)
The Pope’s Exorcist has been gestating at Screen Gems for some time, 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 was 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.
Crowe most recently completed filming on Sony Pictures’ Kraven The Hunter as well as his latest directorial effort Poker Face, in which he stars opposite Liam Hemsworth and RZA. He will next be seen in Taika Waititi’s Thor: Love and Thunder and in Peter Farrelly’s The Greatest Beer Run Ever for Apple TV+.
Avery’s directorial credits include the crime drama Son of a Gun, the Bad Robot-produced Overlord for Paramount and the upcoming Sylvester Stallone starrer Samaritan for Amazon.
Crowe is repped by Brillstein Entertainment Partners and Goodman, Genow, Schenkman; Avery by CAA, Brillstein Entertainment Partners, and Gang, Tyre, Ramer; Kaczmarek, Katz and Loyola Productions by UTA; Petroni by UTA and Industry Entertainment; Hastings and McCreary by Gersh and Gochman Law; Spiliotopoulos by WME, Fourth Wall Management and MARKS Law Group; and MacLean by WME, Grandview and Hansen, Jacobson, Teller.
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