William Friedkin could certainly do with a career boost. He was one of the biggest directors in the world following The Exorcist and The French Connection, but his last big movie was 2000’s Rule Of Engagement, and since 2006’s underwhelming Bug, he’s only made episodes of CSI.
While he’s preparing to shoot Killer Joe, with Matthew McConaughey and Emile Hirsch, it appears he may also be looking to return to the author who really helped make his name, The Exorcist’s William Peter Blatty, by adapting another of his book, Dimiter.
Blatty told Rue Morgue magazine (via STYD), that “Dimiter, a supernatural suspense thriller set mostly in Jerusalem, is a novel that’s been out and around since mid-March. Billy Friedkin is eager to direct it as a film, which would be our one and only other teaming since The Exorcist.”
The complicated plot revolves Paul Dimiter, a spy who some refer to as ‘the agent from hell’, who is rumoured to have killed Ho Chi Minh in 1969. Dimiter travels to Jerusalem, where he gets involved in a psychological puzzle involving numerous characters, religion and a body found in what is supposedly Christ’s tomb.
However Blatty has a bit of a history of saying what he and Friedkin are doing, most of which turns out to never happen, so we’ll have to see whether anything pans out from this.