Annabelle Comes Home director talks spin-off potential of film's new ghosts
The most recent trailer for spooky doll horror sequel Annabelle Comes Home (out June 26) introduced a new supernatural ghoul named The Ferryman, a hooded figure with coins over his eyes. When EW recently visited writer-director Gary Dauberman in the editing suite of this most recent Conjuring universe movie, he admitted to being inspired by the greek myth of Charon, who ferried the souls of the deceased across the river Styx to the land of the dead.
“One of the things that’s always haunted me when I go online, and look at certain s—, is the pictures of those corpses with the coins over their eyes, which was to pay The Ferryman, which was something that I always thought was really this cool idea,” said the filmmaker. “There’s a very Grim Reaper-esque quality to all that stuff, so it was something I wanted to dig into here.”
The titular character in last year’s box office hit The Nun first appeared in 2016’s The Conjuring 2 while Annabelle herself was originally introduced to audiences back in 2013’s original The Conjuring. Does Dauberman foresee any of the new spirits featured in Annabelle Comes Home, which finds Annabelle overseeing supernatural spookiness in the artifact room of alleged supernatural investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren, getting their own spin-off movie?
“There’s been some artifacts that I’ve really sort of fallen in love with, that I would love to scratch beneath the surface I’ve presented here, and see what’s up with them,” said the director, who wrote The Nun and both previous Annabelle movies. “But I didn’t look at this process, or I know James (Wan, producer) didn’t, going, ‘What other stuff can we absolutely spin-off into other movies?’ [It’s about] what works for this movie, and then if people seem to dig it, then we’ll got from there. I mean, when James did The Nun for Conjuring 2, it wasn’t like, ‘Oh, that’s going to be great as a spin-off.’ It was just the audience seemed to really respond to it — for good reason, because she’s terrifying — and then going, ‘Well, okay, that feels like a movie.’ But it’s always been a very organic process, which I’ve always respected and like about it.”
In this third film about the evil doll, Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga reprise their roles from the Conjuring films of Ed and Lorraine Warren while Mckenna Grace plays their daughter, Judy.
Watch the trailer for Annabelle Comes Home, above.
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