Though the most recent ‘Conjuring’ film, ‘The Devil Made Me Do It,’ didn’t gross nearly as much as the first two films in the franchise, it would be silly to call it a failure. James Wan’s ‘Conjuring’ films, and by extension, the cinematic universe he created, are all made with relatively small budgets and all turn a hefty profit. Realistically, Wan and his production company could pump out new ‘Conjuring’ films for the next decade and still be fine. However, it appears that might be coming to an end.
Speaking to Collider, while promoting his production company’s newest film, “M3GAN,” James Wan talked about the future of “The Conjuring” franchise. And apparently, he’s not really all that interested in milking the life out of the film series. In fact, the fourth film, still in development, might mark the end of “The Conjuring.”
“Yeah, we are working on it right now,” said Wan about a fourth ‘Conjuring.’ “With the ‘Conjuring’ films, we are very precious about [them]. And so we kind of want to just take our time to make sure we get it right and to make sure the emotion of the Warren stories that we want to tell, and moving into, and potentially wrapping up, we just want to make sure that it’s the right thing, the right story that we’re telling.”
Replying to a follow-up question about “The Conjuring 4” being the end of the road for the Warrens’ story, Wan said, “We never know. You never know. We’ll see.”
Obviously, even if James Wan put an end to the ‘Conjuring’ films, that wouldn’t be an end to the entire franchise. There have been multiple spinoffs already, including “Annabelle,” “The Nun,” and more.” But what he’s really referencing is the end of the story that follows the Warrens, a married couple who investigate supernatural horrors.
The most recent ‘Conjuring’ film, which was released in June 2021, was the first film in the trilogy to not have Wan behind the camera as director. He was replaced by Michael Chaves. Though the film didn’t achieve the box office success of the first two, it still earned more than $206 million at a time when the pandemic was hurting theaters quite a bit. It was also released simultaneously on HBO Max, which we saw take a bite out of the box office grosses of a bunch of Warner Bros. films that year.
We’ll just have to wait and see if James Wan is willing to pull the plug on “The Conjuring” film series when we learn more about the fourth film, which is hopefully sooner rather than later.