'Annabelle 2' Is On The Way, So Burn Your Doll Collection Now

Annabelle was a pretty solid little horror movie whose greatest sin was being a spin-off of the far superior The Conjuring. It was also a massive hit, grossing $256 million worldwide against a budget of only $6.5 million. The fact that we're getting news of a sequel now and not a year ago is shocking. The horror genre, after all, is no stranger to franchises that move at the speed of light and milk the goodwill of fans the world over. So congratulations on not being that, Annabelle 2.

For everything we know so far about the next adventure of that demonic doll, hit the jump.

The news comes to us from The Tracking Board, who report that original screenwriter Gary Dauberman has been brought back to pen the sequel. However, original director John Leonetti may not return for part two, so the search may be on for someone new. Considering how small the budget was on the first movie and what a sure thing a sequel will be, New Line and producer James Wan should take a chance on a young and hungry filmmaker with something to prove. There are a number of seriously talented genre filmmakers toiling away on the festival and direct-to-video circuits. Give them work!

Originally introduced in the opening scene of The Conjuring, Annabelle is the kind of movie doll that looks so terrifying that no sane human being would own it in the first place. The fact that it's also possessed by an angry demon is just the cherry on top of an already fairly crummy sundae. Her spin-off was an origin story, explaining just how this thing came to be inhabited by pure evil in the first place. It's a good, simple movie with its fair share of tense moments and good scares. It also has this scene, which may require a change of pants:

But where do you go with an Annabelle 2? The first film was set in 1969 and we know that Ed and Lorraine Warren (the protagonists of The Conjuring) have the doll under lock and key by 1971. Do you squeeze another storyline into those very busy two years or do you leap into the future an suggest that, at some point, Annabelle escapes her captivity and tries to ruin the life of another family? Answering that question is Dauberman's job, but we hope he takes a page from Insidious 2 (another Wan-directed horror movie) and takes a left turn so sharp that it will be difficult to even compare both Annabelle movies. You can only do so much with the killer doll format, so you might as well shake it up. After all, no one really wants her to cross over with Chucky, right?

Now that the project is in the works, we wouldn't be surprised to see Annabelle 2 pushed into theaters by October 2016. It would certainly be synergistic, since The Conjuring 2 is set to arrive on June 10, 2016.