first confrontation with Pazuzu. Again, making the film presented many problems once it was greenlighted seven years later. Novelist Caleb Carr was hired to rewrite William Wisher Jr.'s original script, with John Frankenheimer set to direct and Liam Neeson to star as Merrin, but when cameras began rolling in late 2002 Paul Schrader was in the director's chair making his first horror film in two decades, now a Stellan Skarsgård vehicle, as Frankenheimer had died and Neeson was no longer interested. Four more writers had been involved and the budget doubled to $38 million by the time shooting ended in early 2003. Robinson was unimpressed with the film, believing it lacked the horror elements that had characterized the earlier films in the franchise. He and Schrader feuded for the rest of the year over how to edit it, until Robinson finally decided to hire Renny Harlin to reshoot most of the film with Skarsgård and a new cast. Shortly after shooting began in Rome, Harlin was hit by a car, breaking his leg severely enough to require surgery and stopping production for two weeks; he finished the remaining six weeks on crutches. The cost of making both films combined to over $100 million. Harlin's version, heavy on action and horror, was released in August 2004 as Exorcist: The Beginning, and failed with critics and at the box office. Blatty called watching it "the most humiliating professional experience of my life", blaming not Harlin but Morgan Creek. He had watched it with Schrader, who said its poor quality made it likely that the studio would try to save face by releasing his version, and returned to do the editing. It got a limited release in May 2005 as Dominion: Prequel to the Exorcist, a version Blatty found much more enjoyable. TV series The 2016 Fox TV series The Exorcist followed two priests investigating possible cases of demonic possession and performing exorcisms. Five episodes into the first of its two seasons, the mother of a young woman convinced her daughter was possessed needed an exorcism was revealed to be an adult Regan, making the series a direct sequel to the original film that did not acknowledge either of the filmed sequels. It was cancelled due to being the network's lowest-rated show during its second season. 2020s reboot trilogy In 2020, Morgan Creek announced a reboot of the film. Fans were hostile to