10 Horror Franchises That Spectacularly Bounced Back

No, not last year's turd-tastic The Exorcist: Believer, but it's FOX's criminally-cancelled Exorcist TV series which saw the property bounce back in spectacular fashion.

Of course, William Friedkin's The Exorcist is an iconic picture that changed the face of cinema. Away from that, 1990's The Exorcist III is a hugely underappreciated classic that finally seems to be getting a little more love in recent years. But elsewhere? Yeah, it's been a pretty rough ride for this franchise.

Exorcist II: The Heretic is largely viewed as one of the worst big-name horror pictures of all time, whilst post-Exorcist III offerings The Beginning and Dominion were likewise total stinkers. As such, expectations were extremely low when FOX announced an Exorcist TV show for 2016.

Somewhat surprisingly, the series - simply titled The Exorcist - proved to be a phenomenal return to form for an IP that had been starved of quality for over 25 years. With this Jeremy Slater-created small-screen effort, horror hounds were given a tense, terrifying, slow-building spectacular which crafted its own, fresh story before that jaw-dropping reveal which brought Regan MacNeil to the fore and tethered this show to Friedkin's original.

Sadly, declining viewership saw The Exorcist axed after two seasons, with the property instead continuing on with David Gordon Green's dire Believer; a movie which serves as the launching point for a new trilogy of Exorcist films.