‘Annabelle Comes Home’ Producer Offers ‘Crooked Man’ Update

With the release of The Conjuring in 2013, fans were given a compelling haunted house story inspired by real-life demonologists Ed and Lorraine Warren, immediately sparking interest in audiences to see more of their adventures. The sprawling nature of their investigations has already led to two spinoff series, Annabelle and The Nun, igniting an official shared universe of terrifying tales that all originated with The Conjuring. The Conjuring 2 delivered audiences a glimpse of the terrifying Crooked Man figure, who was reported to be getting his own spinoff film. Franchise producer Peter Safran confirmed that the creative team is still interested in telling that story, but the focus of the series has been on other elements of the mythology.

“There are a bunch of things that we’re exploring in [Annabelle Comes Home] that I just love. That I think are going to be great,” Safran shared during a set visit for the new Annabelle film which ComicBook.com attended. “Frequently, the audience tells you what the next one should be. When we did Conjuring 2, we all thought Crooked Man would be the next one out the gate. We just loved it. It was just a great character. Instead, the audience was so fascinated by the nun.”

In that sequel, the Nun was a demonic figure who had tormented Lorraine Warren throughout her life, immediately creating an iconic character in the franchise. While the Crooked Man was still an imposing figure, his backstory tied less into the events of the overall franchise.

“With so many people who were directly messaging James about what was her origin, who is she, where’d she come … There’s just a real fascination. It was clear that that, in fact, should be the next one,” Safran admitted. “It’s not that we won’t do Crooked Man, but you kind of have to balance out [the franchise]. I’m sure that we have ideas of what we want to do beyond this, from the artifact room, but I suspect that we’ll probably … The audience will tell us exactly what we should be doing.”

The Crooked Man was played by Javier Botet in the film, whose otherworldly performance was so unsettling that many audiences thought the character was entirely CGI. Botet shared with ComicBook.com last summer that the project was still being developed and that he hadn’t heard any updates.

“There’s no updates. The last update was a few months ago, they were speaking about what was going to be the next movie,” Botet explained. “But I think they were speaking about doing the third part of Annabelle. But since we were shooting The Conjuring 2, the producers told me that they had the plan, and they expect in the future we will be going to do the Crooked Man spin-off. The last year we’ve been speaking and they still have the intention and the screenplay is being done. I think they are changing, but the project exists, but there’s no new updates.”

The next film in the series is Annabelle Comes Home, which hits theaters on June 28th, and The Conjuring 3, which opens on September 11, 2020.

Would you like to see a Crooked Man film be prioritized? Let us know in the comments below or hit up @TheWolfman on Twitter to talk all things horror and Star Wars!

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