As you may have learned from Avengers: Endgame, just because you’re reaching some final apex of your universe, the next step is not to end that universe, but to keep going in the quest for more money. And now that appears like it will happen with The Conjuring, despite the Last Rites finale.
Now that The Conjuring: Last Rites has opened with $194 million worldwide, the single best opening for a horror movie in history, WB is hard at work trying to think about how they can expand on that. And right now, that’s not more spin-offs like Annabelle or The Nun (though no doubt more are coming), but another The Conjuring “proper” film. This time? A prequel, according to Puck News.
While we don’t have any fixed details about how this would play out, this was already set up to a certain extent in a prologue in Last Rites with different actors playing young Ed and Lorraine Warren, Orion Smith and Madison Lawlor respectively. On the one hand, The Conjuring now has an already-seen set-up for this and two actors ready to go. On the other, these are effectively brand new faces and not stars almost anyone would recognize, unlike Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga, who have led all four movies.
That said, it’s not uncommon for less-known faces to lead horror movies, and the Conjuring name alone is likely to be enough of a draw. Plus, the amount of people who watched this movie would know these guys are in the prequel. I would not expect that WB believes this will make anything like Last Rites just did, but with the low budgets of these movies, it would likely rake in cash whatever it makes.
So, it is not terribly surprising that this is happening, but one catch is that Conjuring mastermind may not be involved with this, as the Puck report talks about a potential split between James Wan and WB after all this time. The entire piece is called “James Wan’s Conjuring Futures Looks Dead.” However, Last Rites was not directed or even written by Wan, so the series can continue on without him, even if he was responsible for its best early content and has been a producer. Audiences do not seem to really care what critics think of these movies, as loads showed up for the “rotten” rated Last Rites.
We do not know what the end box office haul of Last Rites will be, but it’s a safe bet that if the movie made half the total of the highest-earner in the franchise in a weekend, it’s going to be the most by a big amount. We’ll see how things progress on both this and the prequel idea.
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Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/paultassi/2025/09/09/the-conjuring-may-return-after-last-rites-shocking-no-one/
