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‘The Conjuring 4' set to scare with writer from previous two films and James Wan reportedly on board
The fourth Conjuring film will be the ninth film in the $2 billion franchise.
New Line is moving forward with The Conjuring 4 and has hired David Leslie Johnson-McGoldrick, the writer behind The Conjuring 2, The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It, and the upcoming Aquaman and the Lost City on board to pen the script.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Aquaman director James Wan and Peter Safran are back to produce the film, just like they’ve backed the first eight films in the $2 billion Conjuring Universe, the last of which, The Nun 2, is currently filming in France.
There’s no news yet on what the fourth Conjuring film will be about. The first three films center around real-life cases from paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren, played in the franchise by Vera Farmiga and Patrick Wilson. Wilson and Farmiga are expected to reprise their roles once more, though no deals have been officially signed yet.
The last Conjuring film — The Devil Made Me Do It — had the Warrens working with a local police department for the first time to look into a murder case (one that is based on a real-life murder) where the defendant Arne Johnson claimed he was possessed by a demon when he committed his crimes. His plea didn’t fly in the movie or in real life.
In the movie, however, there is a demon possessing Johnson who (spoiler!) at the end of the film jumps into Ed Warren. A possessed Ed tries to kill his wife, Lorraine, but Lorraine is able to get through to the real Ed, who then destroys a witch’s altar that sends the demon back to Hell.
The Devil Made Me Do It also brought the Warrens into the ‘80s. "It just felt like the natural progression because we had spent a lot of time in the '70s,” Wan said when the third Conjuring film came out. “Ed and Lorraine Warren, their cases and their career went from the '60s, '70s, '80s, and into the '90s. It just felt like the natural progression for us … we’ve exhausted the '70s look, and the '80s was the natural way to go.”
Just because The Devil Made Me Do It took place in the ‘80s, however, doesn’t mean the fourth film will jump ahead a decade.
“This is the dawn of the Satanic Panic,” The Devil Made Me Do It director Micahel Chaves said last year about the time frame for his film. “I think there was a lot of cool textural things that play a backdrop in this movie, and it's fodder for something that could be explored in future cases.”
The Conjuring 4 is still in its early days, so no news yet on when the film will go into production much less premiere in theaters.
If you're looking for more horror in the meantime, check out the extensive catalog of horror flicks on Peacock, including Halloween Ends, the last film in David Gordon Green's trilogy.
