By the time James Wan’s The Conjuring 2 hit theaters in 2016, the Conjuring Universe was already well on its way to becoming a great big deal for Warner Bros. The first film in the series, The Conjuring (2013), had raked in over $300M at the worldwide box office on the back of a $20M production budget, and that film’s first spin-off, Annabelle, drummed up another quarter-billion (on an even smaller budget) the following year.
And so, when it came time to put The Conjuring 2 together, director James Wan was probably already thinking ahead towards potential future spin-offs. Valak, for instance.
Valak is The Conjuring 2‘s “nun demon,” and would later go on to headline her own spin-off film, The Nun, in 2018. Here’s a fun bit of trivia, though: according to a recent post by Wan over on Instagram, The Nun was originally a lot less nun-ish … and a lot more demon-ish.
Honestly, it’s pretty hard to imagine this being the case, what with how perfectly The Nun fit into the greater world that Wan and company created with the Conjuring Universe, but … yup, The Nun was originally a fairly classic-looking demon monster. We gotta agree with Wan here: despite how cool that demon might look, it’s still doesn’t carry the same visual charge of seeing a freakish nun creep up on you in the dark.
For those wondering what’s going on in the Conjuring Universe these days, The Nun 2 (directed by Michael Chaves, working from a script by Malignant‘s Akela Cooper) is slated to arrive next September, while the long-gestating The Crooked Man remains in development. Stay tuned for further updates on both of these projects as they roll in.
