The Conjuring universe of films has been scaring horror fans for almost a decade. What started out as a terrifying love letter to the haunted house sub-genre quickly spawned one of the most successful franchises and expanded universes in movie history. However, now we have learned from director James Wan, the godfather of The Conjuring, that the long-in-development Crooked Man spin-off isn’t moving forward.
The news came via an Instagram post Wan shared Friday evening featuring various behind-the-scenes images of himself and actor Javier Botet aka The Crooked Man on the set of The Conjuring 2. The images see Botet in full costume and this is arguably the best look that fans have gotten of the scary entity yet. In the film, he was covered mostly in shadows, but this post wonderfully or, depending on your preferred fright level, horrifyingly presents all the insane detail that went into making this now iconic ghostly terror. The dirty pinstriped magenta suit paired with the same color bowler hat covering the demon's eyes is a creepy sight, to say the least. The Crooked Man’s Joker-like smile and glasses on top of his hat, where his eyes should be, top off this demon’s haunting attire nicely. In the post, Wan praised Botet’s performance while also reminding fans that he wasn’t a CGI creation like many people, including critics, originally thought. He was almost an entirely practical creation from Wan’s maddening mind which only added to the traumatizing mark that The Crooked Man left on his audience.
That’s why it's sad to hear this particular Conjuring spin-off isn’t going forward. The Conjuring 2, where The Crooked Man was introduced, was one of the best horror sequels ever made. While he was overshadowed by the main villain of the film, Valak the evil nun, The Crooked Man added such a memorably frightening atmosphere to the film. The demon arguably had the best scare of the film as well which saw him morph out of a shape of a dog to traumatize the audience as he revealed his massive true horrifying form down a dark hallway. There was also a lot of twisted fairytale-like lore that was teased that would have been perfect for his own spin-off.
However, even though this is disappointing news to hear for any fan of the franchise, it shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise as the spin-off has been in development for around half a decade. They have been talking about doing a Crooked Man film since The Conjuring 2 came out in 2016 with very few updates. To put it in perspective, around the same time, The Nun spin-off was green-lit and released in 2018. A sequel for that film is already in production and coming out next September. The Nun was the more popular of the two characters, but Wan mentioned in his post that he is hopeful that a Crooked Man spin-off could still see the light of day in the future.
Even with this blow, The Conjuring universe is as healthy as ever with the previously mentioned The Nun 2 and The Conjuring 4 coming in the near future. There’s also nothing stopping Wan and his team from applying the ideas for the Crooked Man to either one of those two upcoming films. It’s likely we haven’t seen the last of this well-dressed demon.
While we wait to see if The Crooked Man will return to this ghost-filled universe in some form, you can view Wan’s full post and watch the trailer for The Conjuring 2 down below. The Nun 2 is currently filming and slated to hit theaters on September 8, 2023, and The Conjuring 4 is still in pre-production. The Conjuring 2 can be streamed, along with the rest of the trilogy, on HBO Max right now.