The spooky season usually starts a month early for movies (or even earlier with retail stores already setting up shop for Halloween-themed products…BAH!). So, in September, audiences can get a scare with the forthcoming last entry in the Conjuring series, The Conjuring: Last Rites. Deadline is reporting that early estimates are tracking the spirit-summoning horror sequel to open with over $35 million in its early bird numbers just prior to the weekend. Last year, around this time, Warner Bros. had a bigger tentpole film with Beetlejuice Beetlejuice opening with a huge $111 million domestic weekend.
Warner Bros. has had somewhat of a stranglehold on Labor Day horror films, starting with It: Chapter One raising hell with $123.4 million back in 2017. In the next year, the WB would release The Nun, which still has the biggest opening in The Conjuring universe with $53.8 million.
Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga reprise the roles of paranormal investigators / married couple Ed and Lorraine Warren. They’re joined in the cast by Rebecca Calder (Wrath of Man) and Elliot Cowan (Foundation) as Janet and Jack Smurl, with the rest of the Smurl family being played by Kíla Lord Cassidy (Heather), Beau Gadsdon (Dawn), Tilly Walker (Carin), Molly Cartwright (Shannon), Peter Wight (Grandpa Smurl), and Kate Fahy (Grandma Smurl). Mia Tomlinson (The Lost Pirate Kingdom) takes on the role of the Warrens’ daughter Judy, who is now an adult in her 20s. Ben Hardy (X-Men: Apocalypse) plays Judy’s boyfriend Tony Spera, and Orion Smith and Madison Lawlor play younger versions of Ed and Lorraine in flashbacks. Shannon Kook is back as Ed and Lorraine’s technical assistant Drew, with John Brotherton apparently reprising the role of Officer Brad Hamilton from the first film. Steve Coulter is back as Father Gordon, a character he played in Annabelle Comes Home, in addition to the Conjuring films.
Michael Chaves, who previously directed The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It, The Nun II, and the Conjuring Universe-adjacent The Curse of La Llorona, is at the helm of The Conjuring: Last Rites, working from a screenplay written by David Leslie Johnson-McGoldrick, who also wrote The Conjuring 2 and The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It, and The Autopsy of Jane Doe writers Ian Goldberg and Richard Naing. Franchise producers James Wan and Peter Safran are producing the film, with Michael Clear, Judson Scott, Natalia Safran, John Rickard, Hans Ritter, Chaves, and Johnson-McGoldrick serving as executive producers. Wan also crafted the story with Johnson-McGoldrick.
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