In 2013, The Conjuring was released and quickly established itself as the biggest modern horror franchise. Not only was the sequel a success, but it spawned a number of spinoff features that also went on to become hits, from The Nun to Annabelle.
One of the most interesting characters from the sequel was the Crooked Man and while he was one of the first that was expected to get a spinoff, actor Javier Botet recently admitted to Daily Dead during an interview that he’s not too sure when the film will become a reality.
“Yes, me too. Since the first time I met the producers, when we were shooting Conjuring 2, they spoke to me, they told me that the intention was to make a spinoff,” Botet revealed. “So I said, ‘Okay, let’s make Conjuring 2 first and then we will play it by ear.’ But I love the character. It’s amazing, beautiful. So it’s a pity to see only a little, little part in The Conjuring 2. I’m so excited and I want to make a Crooked Man spinoff. But I know the same that everybody knows. They wrote the screenplay and they are waiting at the moment. They want to do it, but we don’t have a schedule. We don’t know when it’s going to happen.”
With his impossibly long, spindly body, the demonic face with the wide grin, and the harsh, guttural voice singing a children’s nursery rhyme while coming to haunt families at night, the Crooked Man became an instant audience favorite after his brief appearance in The Conjuring 2. Although he wasn’t even the secondary antagonist, there was something about his alien form and the smile stretched tight across his visage that simultaneously fascinated and repulsed onlookers, in much the same way that demon clowns affect many people.
But as ripe as the character seems to be to kickstart his own series of tales of preying on children under the cover of night, the Nun stole his thunder and turned out to be the real MVP of the movie, as producer Peter Safran shared some time ago:
“With so many people who were directly messaging James about what was her origin, who is she, where’d she come … There’s just a real fascination. It was clear that that, in fact, should be the next one. It’s not that we won’t do Crooked Man, but you kind of have to balance out [the franchise]. I’m sure that we have ideas of what we want to do beyond this, from the artifact room, but I suspect that we’ll probably … The audience will tell us exactly what we should be doing.”
So, while the possibility of there being a Crooked Man movie that explores the creature’s origins is definitely on the cards, it doesn’t appear to be a priority for the studio behind The Conjuring universe, who are now gearing up for a spinoff of yet another character from the franchise. Then again, the recent success of Pennywise the Dancing Clown might still encourage them to come up with a movie about their own grinning, brightly clad monstrous entity. Fingers crossed.
