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The Conjuring Universe

The Conjuring Universe movies, Warner Bros.' interconnected horror franchise.

Written by Total Apex Entertainment Staff · Editorial Policy · Updated

Total Apex Take

The Conjuring Universe just had its biggest commercial moment right as it tried to call last orders, and that tension is the whole story now.

The Conjuring: Last Rites hit theaters in September 2025 billed as the farewell for Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga's Ed and Lorraine Warren, and instead of a quiet victory lap it opened to some of the biggest numbers the horror genre has ever posted, instantly becoming the highest-grossing film in the franchise's history. That's on top of a decade-plus run — Annabelle, The Nun and its sequel, The Curse of La Llorona — that's made this James Wan-seeded universe the most consistently profitable horror IP in modern Hollywood relative to budget.

Our read: calling Last Rites the end was always going to be more marketing hook than hard stop, because a universe this cheap to make and this reliable at the box office doesn't get retired by New Line — it gets reorganized. The real signal is how New Line handled The Crooked Man, a planned spinoff it shelved during 2023 cost-cutting only for producer credit and rights to pass to an outside distributor; that's a studio trimming the weakest branches of a tree it still very much wants standing.

The thing to watch is whether New Line builds the next phase around new original hauntings or leans entirely on the Annabelle doll and Warren-case IP it already owns the rights to — the former keeps the universe creatively alive, the latter turns it into the horror equivalent of a legacy-sequel treadmill.

About The Conjuring Universe

The Conjuring Universe is a horror franchise produced by Warner Bros. and New Line Cinema, built around cases loosely inspired by real-life paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren. Beginning with The Conjuring in 2013, the series expanded into multiple spin-off films centered on individual haunted objects and entities, including Annabelle and The Nun.

Director James Wan launched the franchise and has remained closely involved as a producer across its spin-offs, helping maintain a consistent tone even as different filmmakers have directed individual entries.

The franchise is loosely based on the case files of real-life paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren, dramatized under director James Wan, who directed the first two mainline Conjuring films and remains a producer across the shared universe's spin-offs (Annabelle, The Nun, and The Curse of La Llorona, among others). New Line Cinema announced in 2021 that the franchise had surpassed $2 billion at the global box office, a figure Guinness World Records recognizes as the highest total for any horror film series.

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