This image is the cover for the book William Peter Blatty on The Exorcist from Novel to Film

William Peter Blatty on The Exorcist from Novel to Film

In William Peter Blatty on The Exorcist: From Novel to Film, the New York Times bestselling author reveals the real-life incidents that inspired his famous novel and how it evolved into the groundbreaking Academy Award-winning screenplay of the 1973 groundbreaking William Friedkin film.

Featuring the original, controversial ending of the novel, and both the first draft of the screenplay and the shooting script, Blatty presents his behind-the-scenes commentary on the differences between the book and screenplays, detailing the specific reasons why the changes were made for the final cut.

This is the true story of the making of The Exorcist, an insider's guide to Hollywood in one of its most creative eras.

Includes photographs

At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

William Peter Blatty

William Peter Blatty (1928-2017), the writer of numerous novels and screenplays, is best known for his mega-bestselling novel The Exorcist, deemed by the New York Times Book Review to be "as superior to most books of its kind as an Einstein equation is to an accountant's column of figures." An Academy Award winner for his screenplay for The Exorcist, Blatty is not only the author of one of the most terrifying novels ever written, but, paradoxically, also cowrote the screenplay for the hilarious Inspector Clouseau film, A Shot in the Dark. New York Times reviewers of his early comic novels noted, "Nobody can write funnier lines than William Peter Blatty," describing him as "a gifted virtuoso who writes like S. J. Perelman."

A Tom Doherty Associates Book