New Line seems hellbent on conjuring up a cinematic universe around its fruitful horror franchise. Following the success of James Wan’s The Conjuring, a story was spun around the creepy Annabelle doll, which then got its own origin story in a spin-off. Wan returned to helm The Conjuring 2, which continued the adventures of paranormal investigators Ed (Patrick Wilson) and Lorraine Warren (Vera Farmiga) in London. This film, too, is seeing early success, which means, as it apparently is becoming the pattern, the creepy nun from the sequel is getting her own spin-off.
THR reports that Conjuring 2 co-writer David Leslie Johnson will pen the script for The Nun, while Wan will return to produce with Peter Safran. What makes this move interesting, as the trade notes, is that the nun almost wasn’t in the movie to begin with. Originally, Wan imagined the demon spirit haunting the Hodgson family as some horned creature, but the director pitched a new idea that was given the go-ahead and executed during reshoots three months before the film’s release.
The nun went on to be the focus of a Conjuring 2-inspired prank in Brazil.
No other information on The Nun is available at this time. However, Annabelle ended up getting a release in 2014, a year after the first Conjuring hit theaters. So one might presume the same would befall the latest spin-off in order for the studio to keep the hype machine going. That would also give the team time to work out a potential The Conjuring 3, which seems all but certain to come to fruition.
“They do have a lot of stories so I think, organically, if we're lucky enough to tell future chapters, there's a lot of stuff we could be pulling from,” Wan teased during an interview with IGN. He added, “I do have something specific but I'm not going to say it. But I will say this - I do think Conjuring 1 and 2 are both set in the ‘70s, I think Conjuring 3 has got to be set in the ‘80s.”
For more on all things The Conjuring, take a look at some of our recent coverage below:
- Weekend Box Office: Horror Hit ‘The Conjuring 2’ Takes the Top Spot
- James Wan on ‘The Conjuring 2,’ Superheroes, and His Guilty Pleasure Movies
- ‘The Conjuring 2’: What Did You Think?
- ‘The Conjuring 2′: 18 Things to Know About James Wan’s Spooky Sequel
