#Annabelle 2 creation movie#
“I also wanted the movie to be beautiful, because I feel that horror movies can still look beautiful - it doesn’t mean they’re less scary.” “It gets boring when you shoot just standard coverage, the same thing over and over,” said Sandberg, who had a sprawling multistory interior built on the Warner Bros. “Annabelle: Creation” also embraces a classical filmmaking style, maximized by shooting on custom-built sets that allowed Sandberg and cinematographer Maxime Alexandre to move freely and stage sequences with invention.
#Annabelle 2 creation serial#
“I actually equate cinematic universes more to long-form TV storytelling - I’ve always said that the ‘Conjuring’ universe in some ways plays like a classic ‘monster of the week’ episodic, like ‘X-Files’ or ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer,’ a serial with an overarching storyline that ties back to the main characters,” he said. Wan’s guiding influence in cinematic universe-building? Taking more cues from the small screen than the Marvel blueprint. Most important, the film’s ensemble breathes life into the relationships and themes that help “Annabelle: Creation” deliver more than clever set pieces and jump scares. Her 11-year-old costar Lulu Wilson had experience acting in an unexpectedly classy horror prequel thanks to “Ouija: Origin of Evil,” and makes the most of a meaty role as Linda, Janice’s BFF, who has a particularly harrowing experience with a creaky dumbwaiter.
He found his lead in 15-year-old Bateman - her brother, the actor Gabriel Bateman, coincidentally starred in “Lights Out” - who brings preternatural depth to the object of Annabelle’s sinister intentions. “We were very open - we auditioned all sorts of nationalities and we weren’t set on characters having to be ages,” Sandberg recalled on a recent day in Franklin Village, near where he and “Lights Out” collaborator and wife Lotte Losten now live. With a script by “Annabelle” scribe Dauberman that gave the titular doll an origin story grounded in themes of family, loss, and tragic desperation, Sandberg underwent a casting search for the ensemble of multi-generational actresses who would carry “Annabelle: Creation.” Sandberg, the Swede who’d shown a sure hand transforming his own no-budget viral short film into “Lights Out,” a nerve-fraying debut feature that scored more than $148 million worldwide on a limited budget for Wan’s Atomic Monster production shingle. After steering Universal’s high-profile “Furious 7,” the seventh installment in Hollywood’s arguably most adaptive blockbuster franchise, Wan returned to his horror roots to direct “The Conjuring 2,” which grossed $320 million and stoked fan interest in the burgeoning universe.Ĭharging ahead on an “Annabelle” prequel that would explore the origin of the demonically possessed doll - this time with a bigger budget, more shooting days, and a more expansive story - producers Wan and Peter Safran hired director David F. Set in the decade prior to “The Conjuring,” it imagined a Manson-era backstory to the real Annabelle doll that still resides under glass in the Warrens’ Connecticut museum with a warning: “Positively do not open.”Ĭritics weren’t impressed, but audiences flocked to the multiplex, and “Annabelle” ended up with a $256 million global take. Leonetti from a script by Gary Dauberman. The first spinoff, “Annabelle,” was shot on a $5-million budget in 25 days, directed by longtime Wan cinematographer John R.
Immersed in the world of “The Conjuring” while designing the museum of haunted artifacts collected by the Warrens, he wondered: Were there more stories to be told in these objects? “It was something that came up pretty organically,” Wan said from the set of “Aquaman,” the sixth installment in the DCEU and the horror veteran’s first venture into the world of big-budget superhero blockbusters.
launched its interconnected DC Extended Universe with “Batman v. The same year, coincidentally, Warner Bros.
#Annabelle 2 creation series#
It was while making 2013’s “The Conjuring” that Wan - who had the successful “Saw” series and budding franchise-starter, “Insidious,” under his belt - saw the potential in expanding the world by zeroing in on the Warrens’ collection of spooky relics. A relatively budget-conscious sleeper success like “The Conjuring” may not have seemed a natural choice to spawn a cinematic multiverse, but Wan’s studio bosses are already so confident that they’ve announced more standalones to come - “The Nun,” due in 2018 from director Corin Hardy, and “The Crooked Man” - not to mention a third “Conjuring” film.