14 DAY TRIAL // In what is clearly an unprecedented move, the Vatican has agreed to allow access to some of its files in order for Discovery to be able to produce a new series based on actual cases of exorcism and hauntings, called “The Exorcist Files.”
Entertainment Weekly has learned that the series will be based on real-life demonic possessions and hauntings, as documented by the priests who performed exorcism on them.
Moreover, the series will also include interviews with priests who officiate such ceremonies, top experts within the Vatican, who rarely, if ever, appear on television to speak of these things, EW reports.
“The Vatican is an extraordinarily hard place to get access to, but we explained we’re not going to try to tell people what to think,” Discovery president and GM Clark Bunting says for EW.
The new series will not try to tell people what to think, but it will ask of them to allow facts to shape their belief or at the very least to allow the series to present all facts before they form an opinion on it.
Bunting himself says he didn’t believe a word when he first started working on the project, but soon began to ask himself some questions.
“Bunting says the investigators believe a demon can inhabit an inanimate object (like a home) or a person. The network executive says he was initially skeptical when first meeting the team but was won over after more than three hours of talks,” EW writes.
“The work these folks do, and their conviction in their beliefs, make for fascinating stories,” he says for the same publication.
If the first season of “The Exorcist Files” is a hit with the public, Buntings hopes for a deeper collaboration with the Church towards bringing to light some aspects of their “job” that have never been presented on television.
EW says this is just one of the new programs that Discovery is bringing to the table this spring. An exact air date is yet to be announced, but keep an eye on this space for when it’s made public.