The Crooked Man is a cancelled film in The Conjuring series, that was to be based on the secondary antagonist that appeared in The Conjuring 2.
“With The Crooked Man, I would love to push it more down somewhat of that dark fairytale, and more whimsical, subgenre," said James Wan back in 2017. "I love the idea that, within The Conjuring Universe, each of our little movies all have their own flavor, so that way they don’t feel like they’re the same films.”
In 2018, producer Peter Safran told CinemaBlend, “We’re still working on the script for it. The bar is set very high for the movies that we want to make in The Conjuring Universe, and until we get to that place we’re not interested in putting one of these out there into the universe. I still think The Crooked Man could be a very interesting and different story.”
Producer Peter Safran stated that the project had taken a back seat to The Nun, due to audience interest. “There are a bunch of things that we’re exploring in Annabelle Comes Home that I just love. That I think are going to be great,” Safran told ComicBook.com. “Frequently, the audience tells you what the next one should be. When we did The Conjuring 2, we all thought The Crooked Man would be the next one out the gate. We just loved it. It was just a great character. Instead, the audience was so fascinated by the nun.”
He continued, “It’s not that we won’t do Crooked Man, but you kind of have to balance out [the franchise]. I’m sure that we have ideas of what we want to do beyond this, from the artifact room, but I suspect that we’ll probably … The audience will tell us exactly what we should be doing.”
In November 2022, James Wan revealed the project was scrapped for the time being.[1]