Conjuring: Last Rites Director Explains Why Vera And Taissa Farmiga Never Got To Have A Nun Crossover
Outside of Marvel, most of the “cinematic universes” that studios have attempted to create have failed to catch on, but one that has been surprisingly successful is The Conjuring and its numerous spinoffs. Fans will get the final Conjuring movie, The Conjuring: Last Rites, later this year. But it will happen without a major crossover that many fans were likely expecting, or at least hoping, to see.
The last movie in the Conjuring franchise, 2023’s The Nun II, contained two things of relevance to the new film. First, it starred Taissa Farmiga, the sister of Vera Farmiga, the co-star of the main films. Second, the movie contained a post-credits scene with Vera and her Conjuring co-star Patrick Wilson, indicating a possible meeting between the two sisters on screen.
Unfortunately, fans hoping for the sisters to team up will be disappointed in Last Rites as it doesn’t happen. Michael Chaves, who directed both The Nun II and the new Conjuring film, tells EW he wanted to do more with the characters, but unfortunately, it was simply too complicated. He explained…
I was really craving more of a connection, to be totally honest, between The Nun and the Warrens. It starts to actually get into some tricky legal territory because all these stories are based on true stories.
While how much of The Conjuring stories are “true” is certainly a topic of debate, the movies are based on the experiences of the real-life Ed and Lorraine Warren. So drawing a connection between two characters where none existed IRL was simply a step too far for the movies. At least if the franchise was going to keep itself as close to the official stories as possible. He continued…
It was something where, even if it’s a fictionalized relationship. Everyone just liked the idea of keeping the core Conjuring stories as much true stories as possible.
Drawing connections between characters, potentially even making the characters in the two franchises related, as they are in real life, is exactly the sort of thing we’d expect from a cinematic universe of connected movies. However, that’s the problem according to Chaves. At that point, it becomes the fiction of the movies, and it seems everybody wants to hold on to the authenticity of the core stories. Chaves said…
If you lean too much into this epic Game of Thrones family connection, then it starts to diminish it a little bit. It starts to pull away at the authenticity of the main storyline, which is where we all netted out.
Hopefully, what the franchise may have lost in larger connections is more than made up with the authenticity that The Conjuring: Last Rites is looking for. We’ll find out when the film hits theaters in September.
