Unquestionably, 2013’s The Conjuring is one of the most influential horror movies of modern cinema. James Wan’s film helped make way for the genre really being revived in Hollywood in the 2010s. Between the filmmaker delivering a seriously scary movie and it doing so well commercially, it ended up becoming eight movies, so far, and the universe remains alive and well. Well this weekend, the first installment is actually a decade old, if you can believe it, and the director celebrated with some awesome behind-the-scenes photos.
James Wan is among the biggest names in horror right now, and a lot of that has to do with the last impression The Conjuring left on audiences when it hit theaters on July 19, 2013. The filmmaker took to Instagram this week to thank his collaborators and the movies’ “huge fanbase” for always supporting the spooky franchise. Check out the awesome celebratory video:
Wan also reflected about the release with EW. In his words:
I cannot believe it’s been a decade since the first film came out. Yeah, it’s pretty terrifying how quickly it flew by… One of the things I wanted to do was treat it like a straightforward drama, and not even a horror film. If I take the horror out of it, the movie could still play as a normal family drama. So, I had a vision and I knew I just had to stick to it.
At the time The Conjuring hit theaters, a horror movie had not received a wide release in the summer months of June or July since 2006’s The Omen. It proved a smart decision when it opened at No. 1 with $41.9 million, and it became the biggest opening ever for an original R-rated horror film at the time, beating out The Purge’s record. The Conjuring was clearly a huge box office hit, making over $320 million worldwide on a budget of $20 million, but it also really impressed critics and audiences alike.
It gave way to a massive interconnected horror franchise Hollywood has never given audiences before too. In CinemaBlend’s own ranking of all The Conjuring movies, 2013’s The Conjuring still sits at the top of the list. That being said, audiences have remained dutiful followers of the franchise and there’s more in the works right now.
The Nun II will be the next of the upcoming horror movies in The Conjuring universe, and it’s set to hit theaters this fall. Additionally, it’s been announced that a fourth Conjuring movie is in the works from David Leslie Johnson-McGoldrick, the writer of the last two installments, along with a Conjuring TV series being in the works for Max. James Wan is involved in both projects, and he’s expected to be producing.
As Wan plans the next moves for The Conjuring universe, we imagine he’s getting nostalgic about how it all started on the set of the 2013 film starring Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga as real-life paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren. As we look forward to the upcoming installments in the franchise, we certainly do wonder if The Conjuring 4 will be the last movie in the franchise, or if the universe will keep on keeping on. Given the anniversary, feels like a good weekend to revisit the spooky film a decade after its initial release!