EXCLUSIVE: Yellow Veil Pictures has acquired North American rights to Boorman and the Devil, a documentary about the troubled production of John Boorman’s Exorcist II: The Heretic.”

The 1977 follow up to the original Exorcist was a commercial and critical failure but has gone on to earn cult status. Yellow Veil Pictures plans to open Boorman and the Devil in New York City at the Quad Cinema on August 28, before a theatrical expansion in Los Angeles and nationwide on September 4.

The documentary directed and produced by David Kittredge premiered at the Venice Film Festival in 2025. It enjoys a 100 percent critical rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

“I am beyond thrilled that Yellow Veil has come on board to help us share this story with a larger audience,” Kittredge said in a statement. “Like myself and the rest of our team, they’re huge cinema-lovers. It’s so exciting that a film which is not only a love letter to John Boorman, but also to ambitious filmmaking, will be handled by people who share the same passions that our team shares.”

Kittredge added, “I miss big, ambitious filmmaking that takes huge risks. In 1977, John Boorman took an enormous creative and commercial swing with The Heretic which didn’t connect with almost anybody at the time—but now we can look back and appreciate how big creative swings are what going to the movies is all about. Boorman is one of the greatest filmmakers that has ever stepped behind a camera, and I’m so happy to be telling the story of the one film that not only nearly destroyed him, but forever changed the way he made films.”

Boorman and the Devil is produced by Kittredge, Travis Stevens (Jodorowsky’s Dune) and Jim Fall, and features appearances by Boorman, as well as Linda Blair, Louise Fletcher, Joe Dante, Mike Flanagan, and Karyn Kusama. Along with other filmmakers and critics, they discuss “the sequel’s enduring cult legacy and how the Hollywood era in which it was made, changed forever after its release.”

The acquisition was negotiated between Gregory Chambet on behalf of WTFilms and Hugues Barbier, Justin Timms, and Joe Yanick on behalf of Yellow Veil Pictures. The acquisition news comes as Yellow Veil presents several sales titles at the Cannes Market.

“I first saw the film at an early festival screening and the post-screening buzz was just electric. Everyone was loving Boorman and the Devil,” commented Yellow Veil Pictures Co-Founder Justin Timms. “To be able to team up with David and the filmmaking team on this release is incredibly exciting and we can’t wait to spread that post-screening electricity with audiences across the country.”

Deadline’s Pete Hammond, in his review of the film, wrote, “Not only is this docu entertaining, it is also a great primer on the film business, then and now, and is easily one of the best movies about the making — and unmaking — of a movie I have ever seen.”

Hammond continued, “Boorman is the key to this docu’s success with a terrific recall of all events surrounding the film, his hopes for it, and especially his deep disappointment in the aftermath. It was cursed a bit during production when sand blew into his face and he had to be hospitalized with a major fever; the film shut down for several weeks because of it. The best anecdote is one about the film’s sneak preview in Pasadena where the audience, expecting another Exorcist, started laughing uncontrollably at what was on screen. They eventually got wind the studio execs were sitting in the back, and when the suits tried to leave unnoticed the upset ticket buyers chased them down the block.”