10 Alternate Versions Of Films To Watch Before The Snyder Cut

Director Paul Shrader was hired to film Exorcist: The Beginning by Morgan Creek pictures. This film would focus on the backstory of Father Merrin and his time in Africa, established in The Exorcist II: The Heretic.

However, Shrader was quickly replaced as Morgan Creek got, what he described as, 'buyer's remorse'. He was replaced by Renny Harlin, originally only hired to rework some of the material and eventually re-writing and filming the entire film.

Exorcist: The Beginning was released to overwhelmingly negative reviews, including one from original writer William Peter Blatty, who described sitting through it as 'the most humiliating professional experience'. Morgan Creek panicked.

They rushed back to the Shrader version, hoping to could go back and retool the version that he had filmed, which they then planned to release in an attempt to recoup their losses. However, they were convinced to bring him back to the project so that he could finish what he started.

With this highly unusual process underway, he did away with much of what Harlin had shot and assembled the darker, less action driven Dominion: Prequel To The Exorcist. However, reviews of this film were only margainally better than the reviews that had come out for the previous film.

Some of the highest praise though came from Roger Ebert, who commented that at least the film did something risky: it took evil seriously. Blatty commended the film as a handsome, elegant, classy piece of work.

While neither film come close to the original, Dominion at least attempts to join the first three films together with a sense of narrative continuity, while unfortunately The Beginning now exists as a film almost as bad as the infamously awful second film in the franchise.