US$1.5 billion horror franchise The Conjuring Universe and new film Annabelle Comes Home explained

Director Gary Dauberman talks about his debut film, script writing the Annabelle films and keeping the formula fresh

Apart from the US$1.5 billion Conjuring Universe franchise, Dauberman has also worked on Stephen King horror films

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US screenwriter Gary Dauberman at the World Premiere of Annabelle Comes Home. Photo: Valerie Macon/AFP

Published: 1:29pm, 26 Jun 2019Updated: 7:46pm, 26 Jun 2019

You wait all year for a demonic doll film and then two come along at once. On one side there’s the release of Child’s Play, a reboot of the 1988 take of an evil doll – in the original, the soul of a serial killer is transferred into the toy via voodoo; this time, the microchips go haywire.

On the other side, there’s debut director Gary Dauberman’s Annabelle Comes Home, the seventh film in the cross-pollinating horror franchise that began with James Wan’s 2013 chiller The Conjuring. Mixing real characters with mythological demonic tales, the series has already grossed more than US$1.5 billion. But what keeps audiences coming back for more?

It’s not easy making a lasting horror series, as Universal found out when they intended to revive the studio’s classic monster movies. They got as far as 2017’s atrocious big-budget effort The Mummy, with Tom Cruise and Russell Crowe, but shelved other intended remakes for this so-called ‘Dark Universe’ – Dr. Jekyll, The Invisible Man, Frankenstein’s Monster, Bride of Frankenstein – when audience interest waned.

Yet with The Conjuring and its spin-offs, it’s been a very different story.

“We went into it, with it feeling very organic,” says Dauberman. “No-one went in to The Conjuring and went ‘OK, we’re going to blow this up into a universe.’ It just kind of happened organically. I hope that reads in the movies. It lends itself to being a little bit more authentic rather than it being some master plan where suddenly all these things are going to converge and meet up.”