Entertainment Weekly has shared a new still from Annabelle Comes Home, in which Lorraine Warren anxiously cradles the demonic doll.
Vera Farmiga is set to reprise her role from the Conjuring movies opposite Patrick Wilson as her husband Ed. In an interview with EW, the actress explained how she appreciates the sense of unity between the two paranormal investigators.
“I do love playing this character, I really do,” Farmiga said. “To be honest with you, in this climate of dissension and rancor and division, I love exhibiting [Ed and Lorraine’s] unity and their closeness and their togetherness. It’s something special for me.”
Meanwhile, the focus of the film is set to be the Warrens’ daughter Judy, played by Captain Marvel actress and future Ghostbuster Mckenna Grace. The young star is in for a night of terror along with her babysitter Mary Ellen (Madison Iseman) and Mary’s friend Daniela (Katie Sarife). As director Gary Dauberman explained, Daniela awakens Annabelle from the artifact room while trying to reconnect with her recently deceased father.
“Daniela will do whatever she can to find out whether or not there is an afterlife,” Dauberman said. “Annabelle’s presence causes all these other things to come to life. Annabelle is the orchestrator of the madness.”
From the sound of things, Annabelle herself will be far from the only figure terrorizing the youngest Warren. In a recent interview with ComicBook.com, Peter Safran even hinted at the possibility of some of these entities landing their own films, depending on what the audience demand is.
Speaking of spinoffs, Dauberman claims that the idea of setting Annabelle Comes Home in the Warren residence came to him while working on The Nun, which took the Conjuring Universe into whole new geographical territory.
“I was over in Romania for The Nun, and just being away from my family and stuff made me very homesick,” Dauberman told EW. “I was like, ‘Man, I want to go home, and it would be nice on this one to bring the franchise back home, literally, into the Warrens’ house.’ So I was excited to do that. While The Nun is this sort of men-on-a-mission movie, on this one I wanted to go back to a little bit more of a traditional haunted house, but different, because the house is the Warrens’, which is so unique and unusual. It feels like some kind of ticking time bomb.”
Though it’s been a while now since the Conjuring Universe had the critics on its side, the franchise is as strong as ever on a commercial level. Last year’s The Nun currently sits as the highest grossing entry in the cinematic universe, while the recent Curse of La Llorona has so far earned a global total of $62.7 million on a budget of just $9 million. We’ll find out if Annabelle Comes Home can maintain this box office momentum when it arrives in theaters on June 28th.