Warner Bros. and New Line have announced The Conjuring: First Communion with new leads Garrett Wareing and Amanda Fix replacing Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga as Ed and Lorraine Warren, and a big figure was into the lede: $2.7 billion. Nine films. The most successful horror franchise of all time. The number is supposed to tell you the franchise is healthy, but does it actually do that?
Cumulative gross across more than thirteen years is one of the least useful indicators of where a franchise actually stands. What the $2.7 billion smooths over is the significant variance between the universe’s high-performers and its mid-range entries. The Conjuring (2013) earned approximately $318 million worldwide on a $20 million budget. The Conjuring 2 added approximately $320 million more.
Together, those two films account for roughly $640 million of the total, nearly a quarter of the cumulative figure, from two films out of nine. The spinoff universe delivered something more erratic: The Nun pulled approximately $366 million; The Curse of La Llorona pulled approximately $123 million. The Annabelle entries ranged from solid to underwhelming.
The franchise producer’s official line is expansionary confidence. According to franchise producer Peter Safran, as quoted in Bloody Disgusting;
There’s so much more to it that we haven’t dug into. So the truth is, I think there are really exciting ways to go with both film and television, frankly.
That is the studio line, enthusiasm, forward momentum, open runway. But that quote does not explain the specific structural move Warner Bros. just made.
The Recasting Decision as Franchise Architecture
Three facts, in sequence. Fangoria reports that Garrett Wareing and Amanda Fix have been cast as young Ed and Lorraine Warren in First Communion, directed by Rodrigue Huart from a screenplay by Richard Naing and Ian Goldberg, with a scheduled release of September 10, 2027.
Simultaneously, a television series is in development with Nancy Won as showrunner, a parallel track, not a sequel, with no confirmed network or streaming platform. And the prequel format itself means Warner Bros. avoids having to answer what happens after The Last Rites. The studio does not have to continue Wilson and Farmiga’s arc; it sidesteps the question entirely by going back to an earlier chapter.
Read separately, these are three casting and development announcements. Read together, they look like risk-management architecture, the studio extending the brand in directions that do not require any single element to bear too much weight.
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Some people are already questioning whether the franchise can survive the recasting, grounding that question in audience attachment to Wilson and Farmiga as performers.
The counterargument is real and deserves acknowledgment. The Conjuring: The Last Rites opened to a franchise-record $83 million domestic weekend. That is genuine audience appetite, not a franchise coasting on inertia.
The prequel could simply be a smart, creative expansion from a position of strength. The evidence supports both readings. Worth noting in passing: Safran’s current role as co-chair of DC Studios (per Hollywood Reporter) signals executive continuity in the Conjuring Universe even as the creative lineup changes around him.
What First Communion Needs to Prove
Success looks different depending on which reading is correct. If First Communion is a confidence play, Wareing and Fix need to establish themselves as bankable horror leads capable of sustaining a new multi-film Warren arc, proof that audience investment in Ed and Lorraine Warren as characters transfers to new performers.
James Bond and the Scream franchise have managed generational lead transitions, but both had structural justifications built into their mythologies. The Conjuring Universe’s credibility is anchored in real case files, two real people whose story Wilson and Farmiga spent over a decade embodying. Replacing them is a structurally different kind of ask.
If First Communion is a hedge, success is defined more modestly: the film needs to perform well enough to prove the brand still has commercial value, without requiring the new leads to become franchise anchors on the first attempt. The TV series absorbs some of that pressure. The prequel format absorbs more. In this reading, First Communion does not need to be the new core of the franchise; it needs to keep the brand active while the studio figures out what comes next.
The $2.7 billion is a remarkable number, reflecting a genuine cultural footprint built since 2013. But a franchise that has earned $2.7 billion does not replace its two most recognizable leads with a prequel unless it has reason to believe the road forward looks different from the road behind. Whether that reason is creative ambition or ceiling anxiety is the question First Communion’s 2027 box office will answer, and it is the question no one in the trade press has yet thought to ask.