Audiences were apparently ready to embrace a horror film as the fall box office season kicked off, with The Conjuring franchise’s The Nun setting a new record for New Line’s popular horror series. The Conjuring introduced the franchise in 2013 with a $41 million domestic opening weekend. Annabelle, the demonic doll spinoff, followed in 2016 and rang up $37 million over its first weekend. Next, The Conjuring 2 arrived in 2016 to carry on the story of demonologists Ed and Lorraine Warren (played by Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga).
The sequel earned a $40 million opening, domestically.
2017’s Annabelle: Creation delved back into the creepy doll’s story and earned the smallest opening weekend of the franchise at $35 million. 2018’s The Nun, a spinoff of The Conjuring 2, picked up $53 million from horror fans over the September 7-9th weekend. A third The Conjuring movie as well as a third film featuring Annabelle are reportedly in the works.
Although The Nun provided the biggest bang over its opening weekend at the box office, it was the least appreciated film of the series by critics. The Nun earned a 28% rotten score on Rotten Tomatoes, one point below Annabelle which had been the franchise’s worst reviewed film. The original The Conjuring holds the highest score of the series at 86% fresh, followed by The Conjuring 2 at 79% and Annabelle 2 at 70%.
Box Office Top 10: September 7-9, 2018
- The Nun – $53,500,000
- Crazy Rich Asians – $13,600,000
- Peppermint – $13,260,000
- The Meg – $6,030,000
- Searching – $4,515,000
- Mission: Impossible – Fallout – $3,800,000
- Christopher Robin – $3,196,000
- Operation Finale – $3,043,000
- Alpha – $2,505,000
- BlacKkKlansman – $1,565,000
- God Bless the Broken Road – $1,562,000
The Nun Plot: When a young nun at a cloistered abbey in Romania takes her own life, a priest with a haunted past and a novitiate on the threshold of her final vows are sent by the Vatican to investigate. Together they uncover the order’s unholy secret. Risking not only their lives but their faith and their very souls, they confront a malevolent force in the form of the same demonic nun that first terrorized audiences in The Conjuring 2, as the abbey becomes a horrific battleground between the living and the damned.
