17 Years After the MCU Started, the Closest Competition Isn’t the Franchise You Think

When the Marvel Cinematic Universe began in 2008 with Iron Man, followed quickly by The Incredible Hulk, no one could have predicted that this last-ditch effort would result in the most influential Hollywood franchise of all time. Marvel had limited resources at their disposal to launch the MCU, just the film rights to the characters no one else in Hollywood wanted, and backing from Merrill Lynch (who would have taken ownership of Marvel if the MCU had failed), but it proved to work. After 37 films, the MCU has made over $32 billion at the global box office.

The success of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, specifically after 2012’s The Avengers successfully proved that an interconnected franchise of this scale could work, meant Hollywood began to take notice, albeit to its own detriment. Every studio in the system began to experiment with and develop ideas that could, in theory, create their own cinematic universes. The imitators have come and gone, and so far, there’s only one franchise that has managed to find remotely the same success as the MCU, and it’s not one with capes and cowls; it’s The Conjuring.

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How The Conjuring Became a Universe When Countless Others Failed

Warner Bros. quickly tried to get on the cinematic universe train with Man of Steel in 2013, the first film in what would become the DCEU. One month after the release of that movie, though, came James Wan’s The Conjuring, the horror film that officially told the story of noted paranormal investigators, Ed and Lorraine Warren. Produced on a budget of $20 million, The Conjuring made over $316 million globally and immediately made a name for itself thanks to the performers involved, including Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga, but also the iconic villain that made her debut, the doll Annabelle.

The success of the first Conjuring meant that follow-ups were guaranteed, as successful horror films are want to do. Just over a year after The Conjuring came the Annabelle prequel/spinoff, which was successful enough to officially make this series its own cinematic universe in the vein of the MCU. 2016’s The Conjuring 2 was also a success in its own right, but also branched out the franchise more by giving the series another iconic villain in Valek, aka The Nun. To date, the three Annabelle movies have made over $794 million, while the two The Nun movies have brought in $635 million globally.

This is how The Conjuring managed to succeed when so many others failed. Though much of the success of the first film can no doubt be given to the famous faces that are front and center, and the direction that made it a horror hit, it’s the monsters that have made it successful. The original villains of The Conjuring immediately became icons with Annabelle and The Nun now both well-recognized pop culture phenomena on the level of Pennywise the Clown and Freddy Krueger. Seeing their shenanigans on the big screen is clearly catnip for audiences.

There’s another great distinction that The Conjuring movies have made compared to other cinematic universes, and it’s in how it uses the interconnectivity. For example, Annabelle takes place before the events of The Conjuring, while Annabelle Creation (the second film in the series) is a prequel to the prequel. Even The Nun reworks a moment from The Conjuring to make them more connected than audiences may have expected. It’s the key secret ingredient of the series, as each of the movies are concise, contained stories that work fully on its own but which, in the end, reward the viewers who have kept up with everything else due to how it all works together as one giant narrative.

The Conjuring Franchise Is the Closest Thing to the MCU (But Its Success Is Still Far Off)

To date, The Conjuring Universe has released nine movies (ten if you count the unofficial film The Curse of La Llorona, which has some confusing connectivity) and grossed over $2.8 billion. This may seem like chump change compared to the MCU, but there are a couple of things worth noting about its success.

When comparing the cost of all their productions, the nine Conjuring movies had a combined production budget of just over $260 million, less than the reported cost of several MCU films (EG, Avengers: Endgame had a reported budget of $400 million, while Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3 reportedly cost $250 million). Though its total box office is far from Marvel’s, The Conjuring’s ratio of success is much higher, and one of the reasons it has managed to endure so well.

There’s another side of The Conjuring’s success that proves how it’s the only other cinematic universe to really work in the shadow of the MCU, and it’s in the consistency. Since the first film’s release in 2013, a new movie in the series has been released in almost every year since with only a few skips. No movies in the series premiered in 2015, 2020, 2022, or 2024. This near-annual release has managed to keep the series fresh, with a new movie every year that’s not necessarily a sequel to the one that came before it, but with one that has connectivity to the entire web of the franchise.

There is one more franchise that fits the same mold as the MCU and The Conjuring, at least somewhat, and that’s Legendary’s MonsterVerse. One key difference is immediately clear, though it began in a similar vein with a Godzilla reboot and a Kong reboot that led to their meeting in Godzilla vs Kong, the franchise has now evolved into just team-ups between the two as Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire has paved the way for the next in the series, Godzilla x Kong: SuperNova. At this point, it’s not a cinematic universe anymore; it’s the Godzilla x Kong franchise.

As for The Conjuring, the proof is in the pudding with its success, and the future is further confirmation of it. This year saw the release of The Conjuring: Last Rites (now streaming on HBO Max), which was touted as the final film in the series. Though something of an Avengers: Endgame for the series, the movie became the highest-grossing movie in the entire franchise with over $494 million, and resulted in confirmation that another movie is already in the works. The Marvel Cinematic Universe is banking big on its next installments to get back on track, but The Conjuring is apparently just getting started.