The Nun Sequel Gets 2023 Release Date

Warner Bros. Pictures and New Line Cinema will conjure The Nun 2 in 2023. Set within The Conjuring universe and produced by James Wan and Peter Safran, 2018's The Nun saw novice nun Sister Irene (Taissa Farmiga) confront a malevolent force in the form of a demonic nun: Valak (Bonnie Aarons). The supernatural villain — who is condemned to Hell two decades later by clairvoyant paranormal investigator Lorraine Warren (Vera Farmiga) in the Wan-directed The Conjuring 2 — will now return on September 8, 2023, as Warner Bros. shuffles its 2022 and 2023 release calendar. 

Deadline first reported the news Wednesday that The Nun 2 will open over Labor Day weekend 2023, the same year New Line horrors Evil Dead Rise and Stephen King's Salem's Lot will release in theaters. Those dates come as DC's Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom, directed by Wan, and Shazam! Fury of the Gods move later into next year. 

Michael Chaves, who directed the Conjuring spinoff The Curse of La Llorona and last year's The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It, is taking over from The Nun director Corin Hardy on the sequel. Akela Cooper, writer of Wan's Malignant, is penning the sequel from the Aquaman team of Wan and Safran. 

"I do know where potentially, if The Nun works out, where The Nun 2 could lead to," Wan, the director of the first two Conjuring films who wrote the story for The Nun, told THR in 2017. "And how that ties back to Lorraine's story that we've set up with the first two Conjurings and make it all come all full circle."

In 2019, Safran said another Nun movie was an "inevitability," telling EW, "We have a really fun storyline for that teed up, so I think that that's the next one that will be written." The Nun grossed $365 million worldwide, making it the highest-grossing film of the franchise that spawned Aanabelle and La Llorona. 

Reads a reported synopsis for The Nun 2, "1956, France. A priest is murdered. An evil is spreading. The sequel to the worldwide smash hit The Nun follows Sister Irene as she once again comes face to face with the demonic force Valak – The Demon Nun." 

The Nun sequel begins filming next month in France and will open in theaters on September 8, 2023.