New Line Cinema’s “The Conjuring: First Communion” has found its Ed and Lorraine Warren.
Garrett Wareing and Amanda Fix are set to star as the younger versions of the ghost-hunting couple popularized by Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga in the other “Conjuring” movies (and its related spinoffs). Their most recent film, “The Conjuring: Last Rights,” was released last summer and made nearly $500 million on a budget of $55 million.
Rodrigue Huart is directing the prequel from a screenplay by Richard Naing & Ian Goldberg, with Huart being hired off of the strength of a short film. Peter Safran is producing, with John Rickard, Natalia Safran and Romel Adam executive producing.
Wareing stars as a series regular on Netflix’s “Ransom Canyon” and co-starred in last summer’s “The Long Walk,” based on a story by Stephen King. Fix will appear in this summer’s “Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma,” which recently debuted at Cannes, and co-starred in Netflix’s “Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen.”
“The Conjuring” started with James Wan’s original back in 2013, which was based on the exploits of real-life ghost hunters Ed and Lorraine Warren, who would investigate paranormal phenomena and lecture about their adventures. (Ed Warren, in particular, is a controversial – and possibly criminal – figure whose possible dark side the movies have almost entirely avoided.) There have been four mainline “Conjuring” films and a number of popular spin-offs, with three films dedicated to haunted doll “Annabelle” and two to the demonic figure “The Nun.” (There are also several tangentially related movies, including “Wolves at the Door” and “The Curse of La Llarona.”)
There are also plans for a “Conjuring” streaming series, with Nancy Won installed as writer, executive producer and showrunner last fall.
Together, the films have made over $2.7 billion at the global box office, enough to make it the highest-grossing horror franchise of all time. It continues New Line’s legacy of top-tier horror filmmaking, which began with the success of “A Nightmare on Elm Street” and its sequels and has continued with projects like the two “It” films and the recent “Final Destination: Bloodlines,” which pushed that franchise past the $1 billion mark.
“The Conjuring: First Communion” haunts theaters on Sept. 10, 2027.
