James Wan Shares Details About The Direction 'The Crooked Man' Will Take

A "Dark Fairytale"

Hitting theaters next summer is The Nun, which will be the next film released in the shared "Conjuring-Verse." With one film opening each year, we shouldn't expect to see The Crooked Man also end up in theaters in 2018, with Wan explaining the filmmakers are in the "early stages, kind of like cooking away."

Despite it being early in the process, the filmmaker knows the path the spin-off will follow, revealing, "We think we have a really exciting story. What we want to do, with The Conjuring universe, is we want each of our little offshoots to have a very different flavor, right? So, for example, Annabelle is the classic sort-of haunted doll subgenre."

He continued, "And with The Crooked Man, I would love to push it more down somewhat of that dark fairytale, and more whimsical, subgenre. I love the idea that, within the Conjuring universe, each of our little movies all have their own flavor, so that way they don't feel like they're the same films."

Forward Thinking

To some, the success of the Conjuring films and their spin-offs and sequels might come as a surprise, as other horror movies tend to stick with sequel installments. Wan, on the other hand, secretly always had plans for what he hoped to see come from his haunted house film.

"When we were starting out, when we made the first Conjuring, we always kind of quietly, jokingly, among ourselves, felt that the world of the Warrens, and all the interesting artifacts they have in their haunted room, could have their own stories and therefore spawn movies," admits Wan. "We had hopes and aspirations but we never thought in our wildest dreams that we could actually go on and do it."

More Conjuring

The Crooked Man character made his debut in last June's Conjuring sequel, shown as an evil entity tormenting a small child in a home full of supernatural occurrences. The character is based on an old English poem, which explains, "There was a crooked man, and he walked a crooked mile. /He found a crooked sixpence upon a crooked stile. /He bought a crooked cat, which caught a crooked mouse. /And they all lived together in a little crooked house."

The character was portrayed in the film by Javier Botet, who is 6'7" and weighed roughly 100 pounds at the time of filming, successfully conveying a terrifying and distorted entity. Botet had previously played the ghoulish entity featured in the horror film Mama.

The three films that have been released thus far, The Conjuring, The Conjuring 2, and Annabelle, have grossed nearly $900 million worldwide.