Javier Botet knows a thing or two about The Crooked Man – hell, he’s the one who played the ghoulish creature during The Enfield Poltergeist two years ago.
And while James Wan’s horror sequel gains a lot of credit for introducing Valak (AKA The Nun), the Conjuring’s second installment also summoned Botet’s lanky nightmare into the frame, where he ultimately earned a spinoff movie of his own.
It’s still gestating in the bowels of development, and has been described as a “dark fairytale” that’s loosely connected to the wider Conjuring franchise. Because make no mistake, The Crooked Man is still marching forward, as Javier Botet himself confirmed during a recent interview with ComicBook.com:
There’s no updates. The last update was a few months ago, they were speaking about what was going to be the next movie. 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.
Inspired by an old English poem, The Crooked Man is exactly that – a tall, ghoulish figure who pokes his skeletal frame out of the shadows to feast on his prey. It has all the makings of a spooky delight, more so than even Slender Man, but it seems New Line has its heart set on crafting the third installment of Annabelle before paying a visit to Botet’s nightmare machine.
Closer to home, The Nun will hope to cast a spell over moviegoers on September 7th, and for what it’s worth, Corin Hardy’s 1950s-set spinoff has been described as the franchise’s darkest installment yet…