Moviefone Editorial

Tag: the-conjuring

  • ‘The Nun’ Photo & Poster Are Here to Creep Out ‘Conjuring’ Fans

    Get ready for “The Darkest Chapter” in “The Conjuring” universe.

    “The Nun,” a spinoff from “The Conjuring 2,” opens this September. Empire shared a photo and poster, and the poster in particular is creepy as hell.

    This fifth film in the “Conjuring” franchise is set in 1950s Romania, starring Demián Bichir as exorcist Father Burke, and Taissa Farmiga (younger sister of “Conjuring” star Vera Farmiga) as his assistant Sister Irene.

    Here’s the synopsis for “The Nun” (via Collider):

    “When a young nun at a cloistered abbey in Romania takes her own life, a priest with a haunted past and a novitiate on the threshold of her final vows are sent by the Vatican to investigate. Together they uncover the order’s unholy secret. Risking not only their lives but their faith and their very souls, they confront a malevolent force in the form of the same demonic nun that first terrorized audiences in ‘The Conjuring 2,’ as the abbey becomes a horrific battleground between the living and the damned.”

    Here’s the photo of Taissa Farmiga:

    And here’s the poster:

    Doesn’t it kind of remind you of that Pennywise photo promoting “It”?

    The first trailer is expected tomorrow (Wednesday), so prepare yourself. The movie opens September 7.

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  • ‘Annabelle 3’ Is Coming, and It Took That ‘Conjuring’ Release Date

    A third “Annabelle” movie is officially happening, and it will be directed by Gary Dauberman, who wrote the previous “Annabelle” scripts. This will mark his directorial debut, and he’ll once again write the screenplay.

    The Hollywood Reporter shared the news, adding no further plot details beyond the obvious connection to the creepy demon doll.

    New Line has put “Annabelle 3” (full title to be revealed later) on the fast track, with a release of July 3, 2019.

    If that date looks familiar — beyond looking like it wants a Will Smith movie to open on that same day — it’s because Warner Bros. just announced they’d be releasing another movie in the “Conjuring” universe on that date.

    “Annabelle” is a “Conjuring” spinoff, so this looks like the movie in question. That means we still don’t know when “The Conjuring 3” or “The Crooked Man” will be released.

    Gary Dauberman, writer/director of this “Annabelle” movie, is one of the “It” writers (including “Chapter Two”) and he also wrote “The Nun,” coming out this September. “The Nun” is considered the fifth movie in the “Conjuring” series, after the two “Conjuring” movies so far, and the two “Annabelle” movies. That makes “Annabelle 3” the sixth movie in the “Conjuring” franchise.

    Are you disappointed that it’s “Annabelle” taking that July 2019 date and not “Conjuring 3” or “The Crooked Man”? Don’t worry, they’re still on the way.

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  • A Third ‘Conjuring’ Film Is Coming in 2019

    We’re getting another “Conjuring” film next year, we’re just not sure which one.

    Warner Bros. announced today that the company will release an untitled Conjuring universe film on July 3, 2019. It could be either “The Conjuring 3” or the spin-off “The Crooked Man” (featuring the creepy character first seen in “The Conjuring 2“).

    Next up in the adventures of occult investigators and Ed and Lorraine Warren (played by Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga) is “The Nun.” Corin Hardy (“The Hallow”) directs the spinoff about the Marilyn Manson-esque nun that haunts Lorraine Warren in “The Conjuring 2.” That’s in theaters September 7.

    So which film is closer to being a reality? “Conjuring 3” or “The Crooked Man”? Hard to say.

    “We’ve been working hard on Conjuring 3,” James Wan, who also directed the first “Conjuring” film, told EW last year. “We want to make sure that the script is in a really good place. With how much people have loved the first two ‘Conjuring’ [films], I don’t want to rush in to the third one if possible.”

    As for “The Crooked Man,” Wan said, “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. So, for example, ‘Annabelle‘ is the classic sort-of haunted doll subgenre. And with ‘The Crooked Man,’ I would love to push it more down somewhat of that dark fairy tale, 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.”

    [Via EW]

  • Here’s Why ‘Annabelle: Creation’ Is the Summer’s Last Box Office Hit

    Hollywood got two truly terrifying frights this weekend. One came from horror spinoff “Annabelle: Creation,” which scared up an estimated $35.0 million in ticket sales to top the box office chart. The other fright was from the chart as a whole, which marked this as the lowest-grossing weekend of an already dismal summer.

    “Annabelle,” the fourth movie in the successful “Conjuring” franchise, performed as well as pundits had predicted. But its chief rival, cartoon sequel “The Nut Job 2: Nutty by Nature,” opened in third place with only an estimated $8.9 million, underperforming even the most pessimistic predictions. This despite the fact that there hasn’t been an animated hit in months, that kids are still out of school, and that “Nut Job 2” opened on 4,003 screens to become one of the widest independent releases of all time.

    And then there’s wannabe awards hopeful “The Glass Castle,” which opened way down in ninth place with an estimated $4.9 million. That’s just a tad below predictions, and since it only opened on 1,461 screens, that makes for an okay $3,337 per theater. (“Nut Job 2” earned just $2,232 per screen.) Still, it’s pretty weak for a drama that hopes to last long enough to ride into the fall season as an Oscar banner-waver.

    How did “Annabelle” manage to pull fans into theaters during a dog-days summer season? Here are some of the factors behind this weekend’s good-news-bad-news box office.

    Hollywood tends to ignore women audience members at the box office, but at least half of this weekend’s top 10 movies feature female stars — or predominantly female casts — and cater to majority-female audiences. These include “Annabelle” (horror movies tend to draw more women than men), comedy “Girls Trip,” Halle Berry thriller “Kidnap,” “Glass Castle” (an adaptation of Jeannette Walls’ best-selling memoir of her Dickensian childhood), and Charlize Theron spy thriller “Atomic Blonde.” There’s also “Nut Job 2,” whose audience turned out to be 57 percent female.

    Since “Annabelle” was always going to be the strongest draw of these films, it may have drawn much of the female audience that might otherwise have made hits out of the other new releases — and already has, to varying degrees, for holdovers “Girls Trip,” “Kidnap,” and “Atomic Blonde.”
    “Glass Castle” was always going to skew older; it’s a period piece for a literary audience, one that probably read Walls’ book back in 2005 when she published it. Surprisingly, “Annabelle” skewed older as well, drawing 54 percent of its viewers from the 25-and-over crowd. Even more surprising was that half of the “Nut Job 2” viewers were over 18, which suggests that the audience contained as many parents as kids.

    Reviews, once again, continue to dictate in part box office spending. Critics were unusually kind to “Annabelle,” giving it a 69 percent “Fresh” at Rotten Tomatoes. Then again, distributor New Line went out of its way to cultivate their good will. Most horror distributors ignore critics, figuring that they can either avoid screening the film for reviewers or just pay no mind to the reviews because horror fans usually don’t care what the critics think.
    New Line, however, actually booked “Annabelle” in film festivals to get positive early buzz among a handful of critics, which then spread among their colleagues. That, in turn, could explain why older moviegoers came out for this one, since they actually do still read reviews.

    The paradox is that the critics actually liked “Annabelle” better than paying customers, who gave the horror prequel a meh B grade at CinemaScore once they saw it, after being lured to the theater by strong buzz. “Nut Job 2” actually got a better CinemaScore grade (B+), and that’s still pretty bad for an animated movie. (Critics gave “Nut Job 2” just a “Rotten” 12 percent at Rotten Tomatoes.)

    “Glass Castle” may have been trolling for awards, with its prestige source material and prestige cast, led by recent Oscar-winner Brie Larson. But its reviews have been middling, just 49 percent fresh at RT. After a summer of Hollywood complaints about how low RT scores are driving customers away, here at last is some proof. An awards-hopeful drama seeking an audience of older viewers really does depend on critics’ good will in order to succeed at the box office, and “Glass Castle” didn’t have it.

    Just as it’s hard to be a female-targeted movie at a time when there’s a glut, it’s also good to be the first acclaimed horror movie in a summer that’s barely seen any horror releases at all. And it’s not good to be a poorly-reviewed cartoon two weeks after another disappointing cartoon (“The Emoji Movie“) left audiences feeling burned.
    It’s also hard to be an Oscar-seeking movie in August. Sure, “Glass Castle” pretty much has the field to itself right now; distributor Lionsgate may not have wanted it to compete against easier-sell prestige movies that tend to proliferate in the fall months. But it didn’t get the reviews it needed to succeed now, and it may peak too early in the awards conversation, to be superseded by newer, stronger films as the end of the year approaches. (“Dunkirk” took the same risk with its July release, but at least it’s cleaned up at the box office, with $153.7 million earned so far, which will help voters remember it later.)

    No one really expects much from the multiplex in mid-August. The hyped, would-be blockbusters have usually all come out by this time, and there’s not much to look forward to until after Labor Day. That’s why it was such a surprise this time last year when “Sausage Party” became a hit (it opened with $34.2 million, nearly as much as “Annabelle: Creation” this weekend).

    This weekend last year also saw the releases of “Pete’s Dragon” (a kid movie reboot that disappointed at the box office), “Florence Foster Jenkins” (a period biopic whose critical and commercial response were analogous to “Glass Castle,” though Meryl Streep‘s performance was still memorable enough to earn her an Oscar nomination), and “Hell or High Water” (another indie Oscar-hopeful that rode its strong reviews to a Best Picture nomination.) Still, despite the similarities, last August also had two big late-season hits: comic book film “Suicide Squad” and horror smash “Don’t Breathe.”

    Nothing like those films has opened (or is likely to open) this August. No wonder this weekend’s box office total of about $118.2 million is the lowest of the summer, and that the summer as a whole has come in about 10 percent below last summer’s take up to this point.

    Along with Rotten Tomatoes, that’s been Hollywood’s other scapegoat for poor summer sales. It certainly explains the lack of enthusiasm for “Nut Job 2,” whose 2014 predecessor wasn’t that beloved to begin with. Then again, new franchises (“The Dark Tower“), original-screenplay comedies and horror movies (“The House,” “Wish Upon“), and non-franchise prestige dramas (“Detroit“) haven’t done that well either. About the only movies that have done well this summer are superhero franchise movies.

    At least “Annabelle” proves that you don’t have to wear spandex to have a successful franchise. Sure, “Creation” has the lowest opening of the four, but they’ve all been in the same ballpark. (The highest was the original 2013 “Conjuring,” with $41.9 million, just $6.9 million more than “Creation.”)

    Worldwide, the franchise has earned a shocking $967 million after just four movies, making it the fourth biggest horror franchise of all time (after “Alien,” “The Mummy,” and “Resident Evil“). With more sequels and spinoffs on the way “Conjuring” will continue to be one of the few non-superhero franchises that doesn’t give studio executives nightmares.

  • Box Office: ‘Annabelle: Creation’ Conjuring $36 Million Domestic Debut

    LOS ANGELES (Variety.com) – “Annabelle: Creation” isn’t just fleshing out New Line Cinema’s self-proclaimed “Conjuring Universe,” it’s also helping to save the back half of the summer box office. The prequel to 2014’s “Annabelle” is conjuring up a $36 million domestic debut.

    According to estimates, Warner Bros.’ supernatural horror will easily win its opening weekend after taking in $15 million from 3,502 locations on Friday, including Thursday night previews. Talitha Bateman, Lulu Wilson, Stephanie Sigman, Miranda Otto, and Anthony LaPaglia star in the origin story behind the killer, antique doll from director David F. Sandberg.

    Also in the double digits for WB, “Dunkirk” continues to steamroll its blockbuster competition in second place. Despite being in its fourth frame, Christopher Nolan‘s World War II drama is expected to add just under $11 million to its total after making just over $3 million from 3,762 screens on Friday. That number is also expected to officially put “Dunkirk” over the $150 million marker domestically with $153 million.

    New entry “Nut Job 2: Nutty by Nature” also managed to snag a spot in the top 3, despite only pulling off an $8 million heist. The sequel to 2014’s “The Nut Job” scored just shy of $3 million from 4,003 screens on Friday. Will Arnett, Maya Rudolph, Brendan Frasier, Katherine Heigl, Liam Neeson, and Jackie Chan lend their voices for the Open Road animation.

    Elsewhere, last week’s winner “The Dark Tower” falls from No. 1 to No. 4. It seems the negative word of mouth/press has halted Sony’s Stephen King adaptation in its second frame. After making just over $2 million from 3,451 locales on Friday, “The Dark Tower” is only expected to make $7.5 million this time around.

    Last but certainly not least, “Girls Trip” is still going strong. Universal’s Queen Latifah, Jada Pinkett Smith, Regina Hall, and Tiffany Haddish R-rated comedy took in another $2 million from just 2,303 venues on Friday. That number will translate to a solid $6 million fourth frame, bringing “Girls Trip” to a near-milestone — $96 million domestic.

    “The Emoji Movie,” “Spider-Man: Homecoming,” “Kidnap,” new entry “The Glass Castle,” and “Atomic Blonde” round out the rest of the top 10.

  • David Sandberg on the Horror Inspiration Behind ‘Annabelle: Creation’

    For some people, dolls are just about the scariest thing they can imagine, more horrifying than clowns, werewolves, or clogged sinks. There’s something about their dead-eyed stare, porcelain skin, and uncanny valley-crossing realness that causes many a sleepless night. And there have certainly been enough horror movies to capitalize on this fear (most notably, the long-running “Child’s Play” franchise). For the newest generation though, cinema’s scariest doll is named Annabelle.

    Originally introduced in the first “Conjuring” film and based on a real-life Raggedy Ann doll that supernatural investigators The Warrens have in their museum of the occult, Annabelle has already starred in a spin-off (2014’s “Annabelle“) and is now back for a prequel to that film, set in the 1950s and delving deeper into the doll’s origins. “Annabelle: Creation” is a lot of fun. It’s also quite scary, taking the original film’s concept and adding some much-needed layers of thoughtfulness and characterization. Oh, and it even hints at where the next chapter of the “Conjuring” universe will be set.

    So it was a real thrill to get to talk to director David Sandberg, whose pervious film, “Lights Out,” occupied a similar place in the summer movie season last year, proving a much-needed relief from all the mega-budget histrionics and giving us all exactly what we need: a really good scare.

    In our conversation with the director (whose next film is the considerably more high-profile DC superhero flick “Shazam”) we talk about what it’s like extending the universe, if working with such young stars was a challenge, and what films inspired him.

    Moviefone: How did you first get involved in the project? Were you a fan of the “Conjuring” universe?

    David Sandberg: Yes, I was definitely a fan since the first film came out. I liked that it was more of a classic, old-school horror movie in many ways. How I got involved was I was finishing “Lights Out.” We were in post-production. We had tested the movie and the tests had been great and everybody was really happy with it. New Line and James Wan [who had made “Lights Out”] came to me to see if I wanted to do “Annabelle.”

    I was dying to do something with these guys again but at first I was like, Well, where are they going to take that? Is it going to be the first movie one more time? Does the doll come back and all that? Then they sent me the script and I was pleasantly surprised to see that it was a very different story. It’s such a different story that you don’t even have to have seen the first movie to enjoy it with it being a prequel with an all-new cast. I was totally on board.

    Was that part of the appeal, getting to begin this whole legend of the haunted doll?

    Yeah, and that it was a stand-alone story so, I could make it more my own. It gave me a little bit more freedom. And the fact that it was a period piece made it very appealing. Period movies lend themselves very well to horror.

    Obviously, you to add to the haunted doll trope, which is a classic staple of horror films.

    Yes.

    Was there anything that you were deliberately referencing?

    Not in terms of things happening in the movie. First of all, it’s a little bit of a challenge to take on, since the rules are that she can’t move, or that she can’t move around. So you have to come up with all of these things to get around it. We throw a sheet over her and have the sheet walking around. We figured we could have things happening around her and she’s sort of the center of evil. So that was a challenge. But a fun challenge.

    In terms of references, it was visual — a big reference was “The Haunting,” I love the CinemaScope cinematography in that movie. And in terms of sound, the biggest inspiration was “The Shining,” just because I think it’s one of the best horror scores ever. And it wasn’t even an original score, since they used a lot of music by Krzysztof Penderecki, a Polish composer. So I used all of his stuff for temp music, when we were putting the movie together. At first I thought, Oh I am going to miss this music so much when we take it out. But [composer] Benjamin [Wallfisch] did an amazing job channeling that same mood.

    I also got some “Devil’s Backbone” vibes.

    With the orphanage? Yeah. That may have been a subconscious reference. But I didn’t consciously reference it, although it is a great movie and I love the mood in that film.Were there specific rules you made up as to what could or couldn’t happen? There seems to be demons, possessions, all sorts of crazy things to keep track of.

    We were just trying to come up with things to do since the doll can’t do anything. Sometimes you come up with something and you cut it out because it’s too much. And some things were just like, Well maybe we can have the scarecrow come alive? It was just about thinking of fun things to come up with and if it’s too silly, we cut it out.

    Almost every scene has a young actor in it. Was it challenging in terms of working with these young girls who maybe don’t have as much experience?

    The only challenge was the hours. They can’t work after midnight and there are only so many hours they can work. There is no overtime. You have to get what you can get in that specific amount of time. Besides that they were amazing. They were super professional. We had pretty extensive casting period to find girls of this caliber. And it’s kind of funny because Talitha Bateman is the sister of Gabriel Bateman, who was in “Lights Out.” So I’d worked with her brother before. But it wasn’t one of those things where it’s like, “Yeah, I know your brother, you have the part.” She had to audition and come in again and again and really prove that she had what it took. And she did. She nailed it.

    Can you talk about your approach to the visuals in the film? I love the super-long shot, where one of the girls turns to the camera and says, “This goes on forever!”

    [Laughs] Yeah. That was actually a late addition. It was, like, a day or so before we were shooting them arriving at the house. We thought, Let’s do a long Steadicam shot when they arrive at the house. So I came in a couple of hours early and drew the diagram that said, Okay, this character walks up this and this character goes there. And we got it in 12 takes. That was it. I thought that this being a period piece and the “Conjuring” franchise feeling more classic and old-school, I wanted to shoot it like an older movie, where they have longer takes and it’s not your typical coverage but you plan out more staging and blocking of shots, which I find a lot more fun. The standard coverage gets so boring.

    There are also some fun transitions, too!

    Yeah! Like the transition into the well. Most of that was planned out in advance. There’s one transition that goes from night to day, where you see the house from the outside. That was something I came up with in the edit. It looks like the camera is in the exact same spot but it was actually one of those things where we found a shot during the night and a shot during the night and it’s almost in the same position so we had the VFX guys line them up so we could go from night to day.

    This movie is also super fun because it sets up another corner of the “Conjuring” universe, with the nun; there’s a photo of her and she maybe shows up for a minute. Was it fun to plant those seeds and did you talk to Wan about where it was going to go?

    Yeah, that was his idea. He wanted to have these references, now that it’s officially a universe, he wanted these things to tie it together.

    “Annabelle: Creation” haunts theaters everywhere Friday, August 11th.

  • Exclusive: ‘Shazam’ Director David Sandberg on ‘Getting to Know the Character’

    Earlier today, we talked to David Sandberg, the super talented Swedish filmmaker behind last year’s sleeper hit “Lights Out” and next week’s “Conjuring” spin-off, “Annabelle: Creation.” It was a lively chat that we’ll have up next week, but, while we were on the phone with Sandberg, we couldn’t help but ask about his next project, an adaptation of the DC comic book “Shazam.”

    We first asked if there was a specific tone that he was going for with the adaptation. (The character was created by writer Bill Parker and artist C.C. Beck way back in 1939.)

    “This will be very different than what I’ve done in the feature space, because it’s not a horror movie and it’s a much lighter tone. But it’s something that I look forward to trying out, even though I plan to return to horror in some fashion,” Sandberg explained. “My background, back in Sweden, before I started doing horror shorts, I was doing animated comedy shorts. It’s not totally alien to me to have more of a comedy approach. I look forward to taking that on in a feature.”

    We also asked if there was a particular run of the comics that he was drawing inspiration from. When we said how much we loved the miniseries from “Bone” creator Jeff Smith, Sandberg said he hadn’t read that one … yet. In fact, the character (and his rich background) is largely new to him.

    “It wasn’t a character I grew up with. It was published in Sweden, where I’m from, in the ’70s, so it’s a little before my time. So I only knew him from the Justice League,” Sandberg admitted. “It’s not until now that I’m getting into the comics and reading a lot of the old ones, the Geoff Johns ones, ‘The Power of Shazam,’ and looking at a bunch of animation. So I’m really getting to know the character.”

    Another item Sandberg confirmed: that this will be a New Line movie, not a Warner Bros. film. This suits the filmmaker just fine considering that both “Lights Out” and “Annabelle: Creation” were made for the studio. About New Line, the director said: “They’ve been awesome. I will keep making movies with them as long as they want me.”

    We’ll have more from our interview with Sandberg next week, ahead of the release of “Annabelle: Creation” on August 11th.

  • ​How ‘Conjuring 2’ and ‘Now You See Me 2’ Bucked the Box Office’s Sequel Fatigue

    The Conjuring 2 and Now You See Me 2 box office2016 has been a disappointing year for sequels at the box office, from “Zoolander 2” to last week’s “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows.” With two more of them out this weekend — “The Conjuring 2” and “Now You See Me 2” — there was a lot of talk that both movies would tank as well, that sequel-itis had set in for good.

    Yet “Conjuring 2” outperformed expectations, topping the chart with an estimated $40.4 million, just a hair shy of the $41.8 million debut of the original “Conjuring” three years ago. And “Now You See Me 2,” for which predictions ran as low as $16 million, opened with an estimated $23.0 million. That’s below the $29.3 million debut that made the first “Now You See Me” a surprise hit three years ago, but it’s still at the high end of expectations. It’s also just $1.4 million below the premiere of “Warcraft,” the highly anticipated online game adaptation, which debuted in second place with an estimated $24.4 million.

    Why are there so many sequels this year — 17 in wide release so far? Why are most of them failing? And why are a few, like this weekend’s newbies, bucking the trend?

    The usual reason cited for the abundance of sequels is Hollywood’s aversion to risk. Properties that already have name recognition in the marketplace and at least some proven fan base seem less risky than original scripts. Indeed, of this weekend’s top 13 movies, seven are sequels, four are adaptations of previously existing titles, and only the two at the bottom of the list (“The Nice Guys” and “Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping“) are original screenplays.

    Nonetheless, even sequels have to start with an original idea somewhere. It’s worth remembering that “Now You See Me” was an original screenplay, and so was “Neighbors” which spawned the current No. 11 film, “Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising.” Someone at the studios took a chance on both of these ideas a couple years ago, and the gamble paid off, not just by launching a hit, but by launching a franchise.

    And that’s the business the studios are in now: not the sequel business, but the franchise business. Even before this weekend’s results were in, it was clear that there were likely to be a third “Conjuring” and “Now You See Me” in the pipeline. Not every franchise can be “Star Wars” or the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but no title will rest until the studio behind it has milked every last drop of spinoff possibility out of it.

    Conversely, this is a reason why Hollywood doesn’t make more movies like romance “Me Without You” (in sixth place this week). Doesn’t matter that the film cost just $20 million to make but has grossed $36.8 million here and another $18.4 million abroad. There’s no sequel possibility for this or most other movies that center on romance (notable exceptions: “Twilight” and “Bridget Jones’s Diary,” whose long-awaited third installment is due this fall).

    It’s not because of Hollywood sexism (or at least, not just because…). After all, horror movies lend themselves well to franchises, and they tend to appeal primarily to women. “Conjuring 2” star Patrick Wilson has earned a following by starring in two horror series (“Insidious” is the other).

    Of course, it helps if the sequels are actually good. Most of this year’s flop sequels got terrible reviews and weak word-of-mouth. “Conjuring 2” actually got pretty good reviews for a horror movie and earned an A- grade at Cinemascore, indicating very strong word-of-mouth. Critics. We’re much harsher on “Now You See Me 2,” but audiences gave it an A- as well.

    It also helps if the sequels are cheap to make. “Conjuring 2” cost a reported $40 million, which is a lot for a horror movie (the first “Conjuring” cost half that) but a relative bargain by summer blockbuster standards. Given its $40.4 million domestic debut, plus the $50.0 million the movie has already made abroad, it’s more than justified its cost. Similarly, “Now You See Me 2” cost a reported $90 million, still low for a summer popcorn movie. Even so, with only $45.8 million earned worldwide so far, the magician caper sequel is looking like a much bigger gamble than the paranormal investigator sequel.

    It’s where the sequels’ budgets climb into the nine figures that the math starts to become questionable, as this column noted regarding the new $135 million “Turtles” movie last week and the $170 million “Alice Through the Looking Glass” two weekends ago. These days, with marketing and distribution costing as much as production, and with theaters taking about half the grosses, a movie’s worldwide earnings have to be about four times its budget to break even. So any movie that costs $125 million to produce has to gross more than half a billion to be profitable. That’s a tall order for most sequels.

    But then, that’s where the final piece of the puzzle comes in, which is the overseas market. Lately, studios have been far too reliant on foreign grosses to make up for weak domestic sales. Nonetheless, audiences abroad tend to be more forgiving of sequels, more eager to see movies in 3D, and more tolerant of movies that rely more on spectacle than dialogue or character development.

    Take the new “Warcraft,” for example. (Not a sequel, of course, but still an adaptation of a familiar property with a built-in worldwide fanbase.) It cost a reported $160 million to make and earned less than $25 million here. But it earned $156 million in its China debut this week, beating the record set there last summer by “Furious 7.” Already, the fantasy game adaptation has grossed $286.1 million around the world, with 92 percent of its sales coming from outside North America. At this rate, the movie should ultimately turn a profit, even at a global break-even point of $640 million, and ensure that Universal’s plans for a “Warcraft” franchise move ahead, no matter how little American audiences or critics cared for the initial installment.

    It’s at this point where the studios’ sequel math begins to make sense. They’re going to keep turning movies (and books, and video games) into franchises, no matter how few of them please reviewers or audiences here. Because they’re not making them for us.

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  • 10 Most Terrifying Horror Movies of the Past 10 Years

    %Slideshow-363087% The Sundance hit “The Witch,” which hits theaters on February 19, has been called “beautifully made, bone-chilling horror” and “spectacularly creepy and perverse.”

    Before you try to figure out what exactly is bedeviling a Puritan family in 1630 New England, why not take in these horror gems you may have missed from the past decade? If you’re not already afraid of old or isolated houses, home movies or anyone wearing a mask, these movies will change all that.

  • ‘Conjuring 2’ Starts Filming, See Director James Wan’s First Set Photos

    James Wan is on a hot streak right now — from “Saw” to “Insidious,” “The Conjuring,” “Furious 7” and the upcoming “Aquaman” movie. He could direct just about anything he wants, and what he wants is to return to “The Conjuring” for a sequel called “The Conjuring 2: The Enfield Poltergeist.”

    Filming just started on the sequel to the 2013 blockbuster, which made more than $300 million worldwide from just a $20 million budget. “Conjuring 2” will bring back Vera Farmiga and Patrick Wilson as paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren as they travel to England to investigate activity at a council house in the London Borough of Enfield.

    Filming for the first movie took place around Wilmington, North Carolina, but the sequel is reportedly being filmed in Los Angeles and London, from September to November. Here are two photos shared by director Wan himself, to celebrate (and bless, it seems) the start of the latest horror show:

    First day of principal photography. Fogbound backyard inside soundstage. #Conjuring2

    A photo posted by James Wan (@creepypuppet) on

    Yes, we actually had a priest to bless our set on the first day of shooting Conjuring 2!!

    Posted by James Wan on Monday, September 21, 2015

    It can’t hurt to get a blessing in — just in case, right? If only the pope could stop by, too. “The Conjuring 2” is scheduled for release on June 10, 2016.

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