By the time James Wan's The Conjuring 2 hit theaters in 2016, the Conjuring Universe was already well on its way to becoming a great big deal for Warner Bros. The first film in the series, The Conjuring (2013), had raked in over $300M at the worldwide box office on the back of a $20M production budget, and that film's first spin-off, Annabelle, drummed up another quarter-billion (on an even smaller budget) the following year.
And so, when it came time to put The Conjuring 2 together, director James Wan was probably already thinking ahead towards potential future spin-offs. Valak, for instance.
Valak is The Conjuring 2's "nun demon," and would later go on to headline her own spin-off film, The Nun, in 2018. Here's a fun bit of trivia, though: according to a recent post by Wan over on Instagram, The Nun was originally a lot less nun-ish ... and a lot more demon-ish.
Honestly, it's pretty hard to imagine this being the case, what with how perfectly The Nun fit into the greater world that Wan and company created with the Conjuring Universe, but ... yup, The Nun was originally a fairly classic-looking demon monster. We gotta agree with Wan here: despite how cool that demon might look, it's still doesn't carry the same visual charge of seeing a freakish nun creep up on you in the dark.
For those wondering what's going on in the Conjuring Universe these days, The Nun 2 (directed by Michael Chaves, working from a script by Malignant's Akela Cooper) is slated to arrive next September, while the long-gestating The Crooked Man remains in development. Stay tuned for further updates on both of these projects as they roll in.
