William Friedkin, who directed the film version of “The Exorcist” in 1973, announced the author’s death on Twitter Friday. William Peter Blatty, who wrote The Exorcist and won an Oscar for the screenplay adaptation of the horror story, has died. Blatty died Thursday in a hospital in Bethesda, Maryland, from a form of blood cancer, his wife, Julia Alice Blatty, told The Associated Press. Set in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, “The Exorcist” captivated readers with the increasingly strange and unsettling occurrences happening around the main character, Regan MacNeil, and her family. In an interview with The Huffington Post in 2011 after releasing a revised version of his breakthrough work, Blatty discussed the novel’s appeal.

Source: Huffington Post January 13, 2017 17:13 UTC