James Wan’s ‘The Crooked Man’ Gets a Release Date
Over the past few years, the Conjuring films have been expanding into a whole franchise. The Conjuring universe has at this point launched several spinoffs, namely that of the haunted-doll Annabelle and this year’s upcoming Nun. Warner Bothers have now turned their attention to another stand-out monster from The Conjuring 2: the Crooked Man. Despite being a somewhat minor character, the lanky scene-stealer is getting his own movie with a release date set by Warners for July 3, 2019.
The film is going into production at the same time as The Conjuring 3, which will focus on one of Ed and Lorraine Warren’s smaller cases. Last August, the franchise’s producer James Wan spoke with EW about the concept and their plans for the film:
“Early stages, kind of like cooking away… But 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, right? 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 fairytale, 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.”
Concept art for the Crooked Man
This fairytale direction definitely fits the character’s visual style, with his design being reminiscent of the childhood terror Boogyman, or Slenderman with that sharp suit. Even his concept art shows a much wackier flair than you’d expect, one that seems to have been toned down for Conjuring 2.
When the film does come out in 2019, it’ll be following other recent “man” films, like The Bye Bye Man, The Midnight Man and Slender Man. All these movies prove that just having your villain be man-shaped with a cool design is not enough, so it’s going to be interesting to see what they have the Crooked Man actually do.