Decade of dread: James Wan on how The Conjuring spawned a universe of horror

The cinematic universe of the Conjuring franchise has terrified moviegoers with haunted houses, a killer doll, and one very unholy nun. But what really scares director James Wan is that 10 years have now passed since the release of the movie that started it all, a 2013 box-office hit that would spawn a $2 billion franchise.

"I cannot believe it's been a decade since the first film came out," Wan, who also directed 2016's The Conjuring 2 and has been a producer on nearly all the franchise's many entries, tells EW. "Yeah, it's pretty terrifying how quickly it flew by."

Despite the passage of time, triple Conjuring universe director Michael Chaves can clearly remember seeing the original film, which starred Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga as real-life paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren.

"It was in a theater in Pasadena," says the filmmaker, whose Conjuring credits include the newest installment, The Nun II (out Sep. 8). "You just felt this incredible energy in the audience when you were watching the movie. Everyone was so into it."

Wan's producing partner on the Conjuring universe films is Peter Safran, now the co-head of DC Studios, who says he knew even before the release of the first film that the director had "captured lightning in a bottle. I mean, it scored through the roof, audiences were thrilled, and 10 years later, that's still the reaction we're getting."

To mark the franchise's 10th anniversary, EW asked Wan, Safran, and Chaves to take a dimly lit, ghost-filled stroll down memory lane.

The Conjuring (2013)

Saw and Insidious filmmaker Wan was well aware of Ed and Lorraine Warren even before he signed on to direct The Conjuring for the Warner Bros.-owned New Line Cinema. "People that are fans of the horror genre, follow sort of real-life supernatural cases, and all that, we've all come across the Warrens," says the filmmaker, who has also directed Malignant and the Aquaman movies. "I remember saying to my agent, 'I'm curious if there's anyone in town who's potentially doing a real-life biopic on the two of them.'"

Wan's agent learned that just such a project was being developed at New Line (home of the A Nightmare on Elm Street and Lord of the Rings franchises). "I was like, 'Oh my goodness! Maybe this could be my next project after Insidious,'" says Wan, referring to his Patrick Wilson-starring 2010 chiller. "It's in the same world as Insidious, but it's a big step up, with more money."

Safran was one of the producers developing the project, which had a script by House of Wax writers Chad and Carey Hayes. He believed Wan to be the perfect candidate to direct. "Insidious had just come out and we all had loved it," the producer says. "He was the only guy we ever spoke to about the movie. James came in and really did an incredible job honing everything to that beautiful sharpness that it ultimately had."

Wan initially approached Farmiga about playing Lorraine Warren, believing Wilson might not want to appear in another horror movie. "I think Vera was the very first person we reached out to," he says. "She was really excited for it, which got me really excited as well, because I'm such a big Vera Farmiga fan. Then I went to Patrick and I go, 'Okay, Vera's in it, you've got to do it.' Lucky for us, he agreed." The film's cast would also include Lili Taylor and Ron Livingston as parents whose house is afflicted by supernatural occurrences. "I felt like, with all these actors in place, I could potentially have a really good movie here," Wan says. "One of the things I wanted to do was treat it like a straightforward drama, and not even a horror film. If I take the horror out of it, the movie could still play as a normal family drama. So, I had a vision and I knew I just had to stick to it."

Despite the film testing well, Safran recalls having reason to doubt the commercial potential of The Conjuring as release day approached. "It was a busy weekend. It was in the summer. The movie RED 2 [was coming out at the same time] and maybe R.I.P.D. might have been on our weekend, too," he recalls. "The Conjuring was a brand that nobody knew." It was R.I.P. to the Ryan Reynolds-starring R.I.P.D. when Wan's film easily topped the box office upon release. "Going into the weekend, we were tracking to do $20 million. By the way, everyone would have been thrilled by that. By the end of the weekend, it [grossed] $40 million." The Conjuring ultimately earned $137 million at the domestic box office after that July 19 bow, and another $182 million around the world. "The fact that it went on to do $320 million really blew all of our minds," Safran adds.

The success of the film confirmed Wan's status as a new master of horror and that he could thrive at a major studio. The Conjuring also super-charged the career of Safran. Over the next decade, he would produce Aquaman, its upcoming sequel, the Shazam! movies, and James Gunn's The Suicide Squad while also shepherding the Conjuring films in cahoots with Wan. "That was the beginning of it all," Safran says.

Annabelle (2014)

Following the success of The Conjuring, New Line swiftly green lit a spin-off film, Annabelle, a prequel about the creepy doll that featured in the original film and was a famous exhibit at the real-life Warrens' museum of supposedly haunted artifacts. The film was written by newcomer Gary Dauberman and directed by Wan's longtime cinematographer, John Leonetti.

"When we showed The Conjuring to anyone, Annabelle was such a fan favorite," Wan recalls. "It was pretty obvious from the get-go that people loved that character. And, if you're familiar with the Warrens, Annabelle is the biggest haunted artifact that they have in their museum. It just seemed like a natural potential spin-off to tell her story, because she had a whole separate story that came with her, and it just felt like it was the natural cinematic extension of this world."

The Conjuring 2 (2016)

After 2013's The Conjuring and the same year's Insidious: Chapter 2, Wan was hired to direct Furious 7, a film production made extraordinarily difficult by the tragic, mid-shoot death of actor Paul Walker. For his next film, Wan returned to the Conjuring universe to direct a sequel to the first one that found the Warrens investigating a case in London.

"I was in the midst of finishing Furious 7, and that movie was such a difficult, tough, challenging film to make. I just knew that I wanted to go back to something I felt very comfortable with and I was familiar with," the director explains. "I love working with Patrick and Vera and New Line. So, it felt like I was coming back to a familiar situation that I love and enjoy, and I wanted to tell the next chapter of my cinematic Warrens."

The Conjuring 2 introduced the character of the Bonnie Aarons-played Demon Nun, an iteration of the supernatural creature Valak and another immediate fan favorite, albeit one which was belatedly added during two days of additional photography.

"The primary antagonist in Conjuring 2 was actually going to be depicted by this big demon," Wan says. "I shot it that way, and then, when I got into post-production, it just felt too much. That was when I went down the path of the Demon Nun. I wanted to create an antagonist that came from a personal place for Ed and Lorraine Warren. I remember Lorraine, when she was still alive, saying that a lot of her close friends were nuns or people from the church. I thought, If a demon were to try and attack her, it would take on the image of something that is close to her, to corrupt her faith. That was how the Demon Nun came about."

Annabelle: Creation (2017)

A prequel to Annabelle, and an origin story for the malevolent toy, the fourth Conjuring movie starred Anthony LaPaglia as a dollmaker and Miranda Otto as his wife. Written again by Dauberman, the movie was directed by future Shazam! filmmaker David F. Sandberg, whose debut, the 2016 New Line terror tale Lights Out, had been produced by Wan.

"We had worked with David on Lights Out, and we reached out to him saying, 'Hey, would you be interested to come and take the next Annabelle movie?' He was really excited about it," Wan says. "It felt like the next natural stepping stone for him. So, he came on board, and he definitely did a great job with continuing the Annabelle franchise."

Audiences agreed. Sandberg's film earned $102 million domestically, almost $20 million more than the first Annabelle movie, and remains a franchise high point for Safran. "You hate to pick amongst your children, right?" he says. "But it really is one of my favorites. I thought that the scares were really unique. It was a particularly joyful experience making that movie, and I got to, of course, make two Shazam! movies with Sandberg afterwards."

The Nun (2018)

Set in the early 1950s, this spin-off for Aarons' Demon Nun character starred Vera Farmiga's sister Taissa as a novitiate named Sister Irene, who investigates spooky goings-on in Romania along with Demián Bichir's Father Burke and Jonas Bloquet's Frenchie. Producers Wan and Safran again successfully gambled on an up-and-comer by hiring British filmmaker Corin Hardy (The Hallow) to direct the film, a $365 million worldwide gross for which makes it the most successful entry in the franchise to date.

"I said to Corin, 'Bro, I really would love to do a horror film very much in the spirit of the old Hammer horror films,'" Wan recalls. "He was like, 'Say no more. I love these types of movies. I know exactly what you mean.' Tonally, The Nun still belongs in the Conjuring universe, but setting it in Europe makes it feel more unique. That's what we felt like The Nun needed to have, something that's different to the other films."

The Curse of La Llorona (2019)

Aspiring filmmaker Chaves attracted the attention of New Line with his short film The Maiden, about a realtor attempting to sell a haunted house. "I grew up loving the New Line horror movies [like] A Nightmare on Elm Street," he says. "I'm sitting there, waiting to talk to the executives in a conference room with, like, a giant LEGO of Gandalf, and I am losing my mind."

New Line set Chaves to work on The Curse of La Llorona, which would be produced by Wan, through his Atomic Monster production company, but would not involve Safran's the Safran Company. Although the finished film featured a cameo by Annabelle, the Linda Cardellini-starring movie mostly concerned a terrifying figure from Mexican folklore and the connection to the wider Conjuring world was not emphasized in the marketing. So is the film really part of the universe?

"There's so much debate about it and I think I've played coy in the past," Chaves says. "The idea was that [the Annabelle cameo] was going to be this little hidden thing that you were going to discover as you watch the movie. One of the reasons that it couldn't formally be a part of the Conjuring universe is it didn't include one of the key producers, which is Peter Safran. The Conjuring is his baby, him and James, and they are still the two core producers on it."

Chaves explains Safran wasn't involved in The Curse of La Llorona "because it was such a small low-budget movie." He adds, "Peter still gave his permission to let the character be in there. The funny thing is that it was supposed to be a secret, it was supposed to be this Easter Egg, and [when the film premiered at] SXSW, there was a slip-up. The presenter introduced the movie as the next entry in the Conjuring universe. So that was a big kind of faux pas. It was a big mess-up, and that's the truth of how that all came together."

Safran himself insists, good-naturedly but firmly, that The Curse of La Llorona is "not part of The Conjuring universe."

"You can't count it!" he says. "It periodically gets lumped in because of Chaves and because of Atomic Monster, but it is not officially part of the universe. By the way, I think Chaves did a great job on the movie, which is why we stole him for the Conjuring universe."

Annabelle Comes Home (2019)

Longtime Conjuring universe screenwriter Gary Dauberman made his directorial debut with Annabelle Comes Home, which was set in the Warrens' house and featured the devil doll rousing an array of other artifacts. In addition to appearances by Farmiga and Wilson, the film starred McKenna Grace as the Warrens' daughter, Judy Warren, and Madison Iseman as her babysitter.

"I had worked with Gary on a bunch of movies, all the way back to the first Annabelle," Wan says. "He has such a sense of humor about him, and it's so great to see that conveyed in a movie that he ended up making. Annabelle Comes Home has a slightly lighter tone to it. It felt like an Amblin horror film, and that's very much Gary's sensibility. I like that each Annabelle movie all have their own flavor that the directors bring to them."

The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It (2021)

The first of the mothership movies to stray away from the haunted house format, The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It concerned the Warrens' investigation of a man named Arne Johnson, who claimed to have been demonically possessed when he murdered his landlord. With Wan busy directing Malignant, Chaves stepped in to continue the saga of Ed and Lorraine.

"I was scared out of my mind going into it," Chaves says of attempting to fill Wan's shoes. "It was in a time where the Conjuring universe was trying to spread its wings with Annabelle 3 doing this kind of babysitter horror, with the first Nun [going to] this castle in Romania. This was getting outside of the haunted house format and trying to do something more as an investigation. I'm really proud of a lot of sequences in that movie, but definitely the opening exorcism. I've heard from so many people that it's one of their favorite sequences in the franchise."

The Nun II (2023)

Taissa Farmiga, Jonas Bloquet, and Bonnie Aarons all reprise their roles from the previous Nun film sequel, which director Chaves shot in France.

"Frenchie has moved on from the first film and he is at a Catholic school as a groundskeeper-handyman," Wan explains of the movie, which also stars The Last of Us actress Storm Reid. "But we saw that at the end of the first movie that the evil was still with him. It's slowly percolating, coming back to the forefront. He realizes that there's only one person that can really help him, and he reaches out to Taissa Farmiga's character. I love this platonic friendship that the two of them have. She cares very much for him, and she wants to do everything she can to help him. At the same time, she has to confront this evil and fight it again."

The film's screenplay is credited to Ian Goldberg, Richard Naing, and M3GAN writer Akela Cooper, the latter of whom wrote the first draft, according to Chaves.

"It was one of those scripts you read and is legitimately scary," he says. "Sometimes, especially when you're reading a lot of horror movie scripts, you know that you can make it scary, but her writing and her take on the world and the characters were so unsettling. It took everything that worked with the Nun in Conjuring 2, and everything that worked in the first Nun, and just took it further."

The Nun II will now be released in theaters Sep. 8.

The future of fear

Warner Bros. Vera Farmiga and Patrick Wilson in 'The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It'

Like the actual universe, the one spawned by The Conjuring looks set to continue expanding. In April HBO Max announced that the streaming service is developing a TV series based on the franchise, while Patrick Wilson recently told EW that "the plan is to do another Conjuring film," saying, "I have not read anything nor have I signed anything, but there is a script."

Last October, Warner Bros. Discovery appointed James Gunn and Safran co-CEOs of DC Studios, meaning that the latter will no longer be a hands-on producer for upcoming Conjuring films. "With the future Conjuring movies, the Safran Company still runs them, but I do have a full-time other job at this point," he says. However, the producer-turned-executive is keen to reassure Conjuring fans that there are plenty more big-screen bumps-in-the-night on the way.

"There's some incredibly interesting stuff coming down the pipeline," Safran says. "On the feature-film front, there are a couple of things that I think are wonderful. I think our fans will be very pleased when they hear what they're doing."

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