‘The Devils’: Banned vintage movie sets box offices on fire

The Devils is a 55-year-old film whose restoration has become the surprise theatrical draw of the Halloween season. Warner Bros. Clockwork launched the 4K director’s cut on October 16 in roughly 350 U.S. theaters, expecting a niche run. Instead, per-screen averages kept climbing, sell-outs spread from New York to Los Angeles, and the distributor extended the engagement indefinitely. The question now is why a once-banned period piece is outpacing most new arthouse releases.

Restoration revives lost footage

The 2026 version reunites material long feared destroyed. Negative elements and magnetic tracks stored at Warner Bros. were scanned in 4K, then reassembled with the help of editor Michael Bradsell and critic Mark Kermode, who had worked on a 2004 reconstruction. The restored cut runs 114 minutes and carries an NC-17 for explicit sexual content and graphic nudity. Audiences can now see the “Rape of Christ” sequence and other passages Russell had declared “damaged goods” when only censored prints survived.

Warner Bros. Clockwork positioned the release as event cinema rather than repertory filler. Trailers highlighted the historical scandal and the restored explicitness, and the campaign leaned into Halloween timing. The trailer alone passed twenty-one million views within days. Festival premieres at Cannes Classics, TIFF, and NYFF sold out weeks ahead, turning early word-of-mouth into advance ticket demand.

Critics who caught the new print noted that the added footage sharpens rather than inflates the film’s argument. The Rotten Tomatoes consensus called the result “a grotesque spectacle with profound moral force,” crediting Russell’s precision beneath the lurid surface. That critical framing helped convert curiosity into repeat viewings once theaters opened the run.

Political themes hit current nerves

The story centers on Cardinal Richelieu’s campaign to strip Loudun’s priest, Father Grandier, of local power by accusing him of demonic possession. A sexually repressed nun, Sister Jeanne, supplies the false testimony. Russell presents the resulting hysteria as political theater, not supernatural fact. Contemporary viewers have linked the plot to present-day fights over religious authority, sexual panic, and institutional cover-ups.

Reason magazine reported strong turnout from younger audiences who discovered clips on social platforms and recognized the same weaponization of piety and mob fervor they see in current headlines. Variety’s review framed the film as a dispatch from “a world gone mad,” a phrase that echoed across TikTok explainers posted the weekend after opening. The overlap between 17th-century France and 2026 America gave reviewers a ready hook without forcing the comparison.

Warner Bros. Clockwork did not lean on nostalgia alone. Its marketing copy quoted Russell’s insistence that the torture scenes were historically accurate, positioning the film as a corrective to sanitized period drama rather than a museum piece. That framing helped the title stand out in a marketplace crowded with prestige biopics that soften institutional critique.

Oliver Reed and Vanessa Redgrave draw crowds

Both leads remain recognizable to audiences who never saw the original release. Reed’s swaggering, libertine priest and Redgrave’s twitchy, delusional nun supply star wattage that arthouse revivals often lack. Social-media posts comparing Reed’s physicality to contemporary actors circulated widely, while Redgrave’s performance drew fresh appreciation for its controlled hysteria.

The pairing also benefits from Derek Jarman’s production design, his first feature credit. The angular, shadow-heavy sets have aged into instant iconography, and the restored color timing makes them pop on modern screens. Viewers who arrived for the cast stayed for the production design, lengthening word-of-mouth cycles.

Studio tracking showed that roughly forty percent of opening-weekend ticket buyers listed Reed or Redgrave as their primary reason for attending. That figure is unusually high for a re-release and suggests the stars function as accessible entry points for viewers otherwise wary of art-house provocation.

Warner Bros. Clockwork bets on repertory

The new specialty label launched with The Devils as its flagship title, deliberately echoing the studio’s 1971 release of A Clockwork Orange. Executives calculated that a single high-profile restoration could brand the imprint faster than a slate of smaller films. The bet paid off when the limited run expanded rather than contracted after week one.

Clockwork’s rollout strategy mirrored platform-release tactics used for prestige indies: open in key markets, monitor per-screen averages, add dates only where demand holds. The model usually applies to new releases; applying it to repertory product surprised exhibitors who had allocated screens for two weeks at most. By week three the film played in more than 500 locations, an expansion path normally reserved for studio tentpoles.

Internal numbers obtained by trade outlets showed a $1.8 million opening weekend that grew to $3.3 million within two weeks. Those figures do not include the simultaneous BFI release in the UK and Ireland, which followed a similar extension pattern. Clockwork has already announced plans to keep the title in theaters through the holiday corridor if averages remain above arthouse benchmarks.

Social media turns scandal into meme

Clips of the restored “Rape of Christ” sequence spread rapidly, often accompanied by captions comparing the scene to present-day culture-war flashpoints. The studio did not discourage the spread; instead it amplified posts that framed the film as “the original cancel-culture horror story.” The approach converted potential outrage into appointment viewing.

Hashtag challenges on TikTok encouraged users to recreate Jarman’s stark makeup and costume silhouettes, producing a steady stream of user-generated content that doubled as free marketing. Empire noted that the volume of original posts rivaled campaigns for new studio horror titles with six-figure budgets. The low-cost amplification kept the film visible between review cycles.

Older viewers who remembered the 1971 bans contributed thread-length explainers on Reddit and Letterboxd, detailing which councils had refused to screen the film and why. The contrast between past censorship and present demand became its own talking point, reinforcing the narrative that The Devils had finally escaped “damaged goods” status.

Box-office math favors the long tail

Most re-releases open strong and fade once curiosity is satisfied. The Devils has followed the opposite curve. Per-screen averages rose in week two in several major markets, a pattern exhibitors associate with films that reward repeat viewing. The NC-17 rating did not deter arthouse chains; several reported that the explicit content itself functioned as a selling point for audiences seeking unfiltered cinema.

Clockwork’s decision to keep adding prints rather than pulling the title after contractual minimums reflects confidence in sustained interest. The label’s statement on X—“if it’s not playing near you, call your local theater and demand it”—turned potential frustration into audience agency, a tactic more common to fan-driven campaigns than studio marketing.

Industry analysts point out that the film’s running time, just under two hours, fits standard evening slots without cannibalizing multiplex space. That logistical advantage, paired with rising averages, suggests the engagement could extend into early 2027 if holiday counter-programming remains light.

Historical accuracy underpins outrage

Russell repeatedly argued that the tortures depicted were drawn from documented accounts of the Loudun trials. Historians have since corroborated the use of public exorcisms as political theater, lending the film a documentary spine beneath its stylistic excess. The restored cut preserves longer takes of these sequences, letting viewers register the procedural cruelty rather than cutting away for sensation.

That fidelity matters to audiences who arrive expecting exploitation and leave discussing state power. Post-screening Q&As at NYFF featured historians who placed the events inside Richelieu’s larger consolidation of royal authority, reframing the film as a study in institutional overreach rather than isolated religious mania.

The alignment between documented history and cinematic spectacle gives reviewers a factual baseline that protects against charges of gratuitous excess. It also supplies educators with a single text that covers 17th-century politics, gender, and performance simultaneously, widening the potential audience beyond traditional genre fans.

Festival circuit creates advance demand

Sold-out screenings at Cannes, Toronto, and New York generated wait-list energy that translated into opening-weekend sell-outs in the same cities. Festival programmers reported walk-up lines longer than those for many new premieres, an inversion of the usual hierarchy between new work and repertory titles.

The circuit also allowed Clockwork to test different running orders and introductory remarks. Theaters that paired the film with a short panel on censorship reported higher post-screening merchandise sales, suggesting that contextual programming can extend revenue streams beyond the ticket itself.

Because the 2026 print is the first to reach the public in Russell’s intended form, festival appearances carried the weight of a world premiere rather than a standard archival presentation. That perception helped position the title as a news event instead of a heritage footnote.

Future slate rides the momentum

Clockwork has already announced two additional restorations for 2027, both from the same era of Warner catalog titles that faced censorship battles. The label’s early success with The Devils gives it leverage to secure additional library titles and festival slots. Exhibitors who hesitated to book repertory product are now requesting first looks at the next titles.

Russell’s filmography contains several other features that exist only in truncated form; industry insiders expect at least one more to receive the 4K treatment if The Devils maintains its current trajectory. The pipeline could turn a single surprise hit into a sustained restoration program.

For audiences, the lesson is that long-suppressed work can still find a market when the historical moment aligns with the material. The Devils waited fifty-five years for its complete version to meet viewers ready to treat its political allegory as current events rather than dusty artifact.

Takeaway

The commercial performance of The Devils shows that restoration and relevance can converge when institutions, audiences, and algorithms align. Warner Bros. Clockwork turned a banned art-house title into event cinema by pairing archival recovery with contemporary framing, and the resulting run suggests that other suppressed films may follow if the cultural temperature stays high.