The shared universe might already be the highest-grossing horror franchise in history with over $1.9 billion in box office takings, but if The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It can somehow manage to earn at least $362 million globally after it arrives on June 4th, then it will become just the second standalone series in the genre to ever cross the ten-figure barrier after Andy Muschietti’s It duology.
While that’s certainly a big ask given the fact that the threequel is debuting simultaneously on HBO Max and the theatrical industry is still in its infancy of recovering from the Coronavirus pandemic, it’s the biggest brand in horror, so it can’t be completely ruled out yet. Michael Chaves is stepping in for James Wan to direct The Devil Made Me Do It, and after claiming it’ll be the biggest and darkest installment to date, the filmmaker has gone one step further by saying it’ll blow the doors off the haunted house movie in general.
“We wanted to blow the doors off the haunted house. Up until now, these movies have existed inside a certain type of framework. We were desperate to take them beyond that. David Fincher’s Se7en is one of our favorites and we were excited by the challenge of doing something along those lines, something surrounding an investigation, within the series, while still using all that supernatural terminology and language. There’s a real victim in this story. It weighed heavily on us because we knew we needed to make a movie that was thrilling and scary, and lived up to expectations, but we were also really mindful about being truthful.”
The Conjuring 3 is already making a slight deviation from the setup fans are used to, with the story focusing on Ed and Lorraine Warren getting wrapped up in a murder case, and the suspect claiming demonic possession as a defense during his trial, whereas the first two chapters were both straightforward supernatural investigations, or at least as straightforward as such a specific and unusual line of work can get.
It’s been five years since The Conjuring 2 was released, and fans of the franchise have at least had three spinoffs to tide them over in the interim, but The Devil Made Me Do It is the one they’ve been looking forward to the most, so let’s hope that it manages to deliver on the steadily-rising expectations.