​【50 m】Exorcist II: The Heretic had what was at the time Warners' largest opening-day gross and ultimately made some money, but revenues dropped 60 percent in the film's second week and ultimately grosses were minimal. Friedkin recalled on a 2019 podcast hosted by Dante and Josh Olson that after seeing 40 minutes of the film following a chance encounter with one of the technicians working on it at a color lab, Exorcist II was "the worst piece of shit I've ever seen ... a fucking disgrace". The Exorcist III In the wake of Exorcist IIs failure, Blatty and Friedkin began talking about a sequel of their own. They began planning a story and script. Blatty continued after Friedkin dropped out and, finding little interest in making a third Exorcist film, decided, instead, to tell the story as a new novel: Legion, in 1983. He saw the story, in which Kinderman investigates a string of murders that seem to have been committed by a possessed, resurrected Father Karras, not as a sequel to The Exorcist but an exploration of the same themes within the same fictional universe by some of the original's minor characters. The media saw it differently, and it sold well. Blatty adapted a more streamlined script from the novel, and eventually chose Morgan Creek Productions over Carolco since that studio had wanted him to write an entirely new script in which an adult Regan gives birth to possessed twins while Morgan Creek was satisfied with his story. But Morgan Creek insisted on calling it The Exorcist III even though the story lacked any exorcism scenes (one was added after principal photography, with Nicol Williamson cast in the role). Blatty directed, with George C. Scott taking over for the deceased Lee J. Cobb as Kinderman, Ed Flanders replacing O'Malley as Dyer and Miller returning as Karras or his double. Brad Dourif played the film's serial killer, and Scott Wilson the chief psychiatrist at the hospital where the film is mostly set. The film took in $39 million on its release in 1990; In 2014 a VHS copy of Blatty's cut was found, restored and released on a two-disc collector's edition Blu-ray two years later. Exorcist: The Beginning and Dominion At that time, Morgan Creek and James G. Robinson, producer of Exorcist III, had commissioned the development of a prequel story, one telling the story of a young Father Merrin's