Fresh from Point Blank and Deliverance, John Boorman was one of the hottest directors on the planet when Warner Bros handed him the keys to one of Hollywood’s most valuable properties and asked him to make THE EXORCIST II.

What could possibly go wrong?

Pretty much everything.

David Kittredge’s hugely entertaining BOORMAN AND THE DEVIL takes a deep dive into the making, breaking and unlikely resurrection of EXORCIST II: THE HERETIC - the wildly ambitious 1977 sequel that was laughed off screens, savaged by critics and came perilously close to destroying Boorman’s career. Along the way there were technical disasters, illness, an occasionally well-lubricated Richard Burton, furious preview audiences and James Earl Jones dressed as a giant locust. And somehow they still finished the bloody thing.

Featuring Boorman himself alongside Linda Blair, Louise Fletcher, Joe Dante, Mike Flanagan, Karyn Kusama and others, BOORMAN AND THE DEVIL makes a compelling case for taking another look at one of cinema’s most notorious failures — not necessarily as a misunderstood masterpiece, but as the kind of gigantic, audacious, auteur-driven swing Hollywood would probably be too terrified to take today.

Every filmmaker has a flop in them. John Boorman was just unfortunate enough to make one of the most famous.