Trivia / Exorcist: The Beginning

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• B-Team Sequel: The producers considered bringing back William Friedkin to direct.
• California Doubling: Filmed entirely in Italy and Morocco. Italy is briefly a location in the story, but the rest takes place in the Netherlands, Egypt, and Kenya.
• Completely Different Title: The Spanish distributor saw fit to rename Dominion as "Exorcist: The Beginning - The Forbidden Version", clearly trying to create interest by implying it was refilmed for being too scary instead of too brainy.
• Creator Backlash:
  • William Peter Blatty said that watching this film was his "most humiliating professional experience." In fact, he and Paul Schrader were nearly thrown out of the premiere for loudly laughing during the screening.
  • Caleb Carr, who is credited as co-writer on Dominion and has joint story credit on The Beginning, denounced Paul Schrader's rewrites of his script and openly applauded the studio's decision to fire him and junk his original cut. While Carr said that The Beginning wasn't what he personally would have written, he did consider it to be far closer in spirit to his original screenplay.
• Cross-Dressing Voices: In Dominion, male demon Pazuzu is voiced by Mary Beth Hurt.
• The Danza: James Bellamy as James.
• Dawson Casting: Subverted Trope. Skarsgard was 53 when cast as Father Merrin, 9 years older than Max von Sydow when he played the older version of the character in The Exorcist. However this is a product of Sydow being much younger than the character; per the franchise's (loose) canon, Merrin would indeed be about 53 at the time of The Beginning.
• Deleted Role: The characters that didn't make the transition from Dominion to Beginning include Cheche (notably the possessed one in the original film, this plot being split between Joseph and Sarah), Sebituana the Turkana chief (the child that is born dead and rotting is his son), the British Sergeant Major, and Dr. Lamu.
• Doing It for the Art: Angelo Badalamenti wrote part of the score for Dominion for free as a favor to Schrader.
• Development Gag: The wall painting of Lucifer in the church resembles Cheche from Dominion in both versions.
• Executive Meddling: Possibly the greatest example ever, as most examples entail the studio forcing changes and retools, not redoing the entire film from scratch after it is almost finished. The only comparable instances are Richard Donner's cut of Superman II being almost entirely reshot by Richard Lester, Zack Snyder's Justice League (2017) being remade by Joss Whedon, and Phil Lord & Chris Miller's version of Solo getting heavily reshot and retooled by Ron Howard — and even in those cases about a quarter to half of the footage was still shot by the original director, far more than was the case here.
• Money, Dear Boy: Renny Harlin didn't initially have any intention of signing on to direct the reshoots for The Beginning, and told the producers that he would only do it if he was allowed to reshoot the entire film, and was paid at least 10% more than whatever they had paid Paul Schrader. Much to his surprise, they agreed readily, at which point he figured he might as well take the offer.
• No Budget: Following the release and poor reception of The Beginning, the studio allocated Schraeder a meager $35,000 to edit and score Dominion for a limited release. The sum was just enough to make the lighting consistent, but worthy of TV, part of the un-remarkable score was even done for free by some of the artists involved, and the CGI is even bad for TV of the time.
• Not Screened for Critics: Neither The Beginning nor Dominion got any showings for critics; in the former case because the studio claimed that the controversy around the movie's production would make it impossible for it to get fair reviews, and in the latter case because they figured it wasn't worth the effort given how limited its release was.
• The Other Darrin:
  • Among the main cast, James D'Arcy replaced Gabriel Mann as Father Francis, and Izabella Scorupco replaced Clara Bellar as the doctor, from one movie to another.
  • Pazuzu, who was voiced by Colleen Dewhurst in The Exorcist III, is voiced by Rupert Degas in The Beginning and Mary Beth Hurt in Dominion.
• Screwed by the Network: Dominion was effectively cancelled and shelved before post-production while another director was brought in to make a new movie from almost whole cloth. Only after that other film failure, the studio allowed the original film to be finished and have a limited release, but still allocated virtually No Budget to do so.
• The Shelf of Movie Languishment: Dominion eventually got released one year after Harlin's version.
• Troubled Production:
  • Initially, Paul Schrader aimed for a psychological horror film. The studio was unsatisfied, though, as they wanted a less cerebral and more conventionally horrifying product. They fired Schrader and brought Renny Harlin to make the film Bloodier and Gorier, but after considering some re-shoots, they decided to remake the entire damn thing. Harlin then recovered all the cast he could and worked a completely new film.
  • After Harlin's version failed at its release, the studio tried to finish Dominion by themselves in order to release it for a second chance, but their editor advised them to bring Schrader again to do it personally instead of committing another butchery. Schrader was given very little money and time; in particular, he could not even prepare a proper soundtrack — he had originally hired Michael Kamen to score the film, but Kamen was dropped after Schrader was fired, and then passed away while the reshoots were taking place — so he had to throw together some pieces from Angelo Baladamenti working for free and some others from Dog Fashion Disco.
• Uncredited Role: Mary Beth Hurt was uncredited as Pazuzu in Dominion.
• Vindicated by Cable: To some extent - attitudes to the film generally shifted from terrible when it came out to So Bad, It's Good and eventually So Okay, It's Average. It's also become harder to find unfavorable comparisons to Dominion, with general attitudes shifting to them being just bad in different ways. As of 2020, the two movies have the exact same rating on IMDB: 5.2.
• What Could Have Been:
  • John Frankenheimer was slated to direct, but he stepped down due to health concerns. He died shortly after. Peter Jackson was also offered the job.
  • Liam Neeson was initially cast as Father Merrin.
  • Ryan Phillippe was considered for the role of Father Francis.

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