When we were told that The Conjuring was one of the biggest horror hits of all-time, they weren’t lying to us. The film has grossed a major $312 million worldwide and is only beaten by The Exorcist, Jaws and M. Night Shyamalan‘s arguably* (*not so arguably) only really brilliant film The Sixth Sense which destroyed its $40 million budget when it raked in over $670 million.
When a horror film smashes at the box office it’s not surprising that the cogs start turning to help trigger that again. Let’s take M. Night Shyamalan as an example; One year after The Sixth Sense‘s release we see Unbreakable in 2000 which wasn’t too bad a film, but didn’t come close to its predecessor’s gross and the same goes for Signs in 2002. After this, Shyamalan’s films get pretty damn awful and now it’s impossible to conjure up any good feelings when we see his name attached to a film, am I right?
Taking this all back to The Conjuring; James Wan has made a great name for himself since Saw first hit back in 2004, but luckily Mr. Wan steered clear from directing these films and, thus, prevented his name from being dragged through the mud. He now has a nice little name for himself and could be classed as one of the most promising directors of the moment and is surely only to get bigger when Fast and Furious 7 is released. While Wan is working on that, however, those little Hollywood cogs have been turning again and want to squeeze Wan’s The Conjuring dry and create 3, count them again, THREE spin-offs.
So, is this plain excessive or downright exciting? In my opinion, The Conjuring was a modern horror masterpiece and I was thrilled to hear news of a sequel. With James Wan not at the helm, however, my interest was brought into question. Without the magical touch of James Wan, could a sequel be equally as good? Probably not, I thought. Nonetheless, all hope is not lost because one of the spin-offs will see John R. Leonetti taking Wan’s reigns. He has worked with James Wan since Dead Silence in 2006 and is probably one of the next best people to take control. This spin-off will be a sequel to The Conjuring focusing on that eerie little Annabelle Doll and may go into production as soon as next month.
What the other two will be is the big question, but there’s plenty of stories from the Warren case files to choose from and all are probably very, very creepy. Remember, this is all just talk at the moment and whether anything will cultivate we will see. So, for now, it’s something to get excited about.
