Warner Bros Touts $1B ‘Conjuring’ Universe With ‘Annabelle: Creation’ Success

So many “universes” since the Marvel Universe brand. Universal touts its monster-themed Dark Universe, and Warner Bros now has one too, to go along with its DC Universe — it’s called the Conjuring Universe. After the successful box office launch of New Line Cinema’s latest horror offering Annabelle: Creation, Warner Bros just announced that James Wan and producer Peter Safran’s Conjuring film “universe” has reached the $1 billion mark at the worldwide box office. Annabelle: Creation opened to $35M domestically last weekend and currently sits at more than $100M worldwide.

Its box office performance, the studio notes, was the highest opening-weekend gross of all films in the “Conjuring Universe” in 26 international markets. As we noted in the international box office report this weekend, the R-rated Annabelle: Creation surpassed the overseas openings of both The Conjuring in 2013 and spinoff Annabelle in 2014.

“This year marks the 50th anniversary of the founding of New Line, and without question the horror genre has always been an integral and important part of the company’s DNA,” said Toby Emmerich, President and Chief Content Officer of Warner Bros Pictures Group. “While the genre has certainly evolved over the decades, watching the critical and commercial success of the Conjuring universe has been truly spectacular and I am incredibly proud of all the talented people involved in making this happen.”

Individually, several of the films that make up this New Line horror-verse are among the genre’s top all-time earners at the box office, with The Conjuring 2 ($320.3M) and The Conjuring ($319.4M) coming in second and third, respectively, after The Exorcist, and Annabelle ($257M) at No. 8.

Next up in the New Line series is The Nun, based on the character appearing in The Conjuring 2. That drops into theaters July 13. The studio is also in active development on The Conjuring 3 and The Crooked Man (from a character in The Conjuring 2).

I guess you could say that the studio is squeezing the life out of the IP.