“The Conjuring 2” was originally set to come out on October 23, 2015, but the studio had to change their plans due to conflicts in James Wan’s schedule. “Furious 7” is coming out at around the same time, and apparently there was a desire to give it more focus in marketing and overall promotion, while on the other hand, the sequel to “The Conjuring” itself also needed more work before it would be ready for a final release. Because of this, the film has now been pushed back by a few months.
More precisely, it’s now set to arrive in 2016, on June 10. This is not a small delay, and fans who were looking forward to enjoying the new film around Halloween will end up disappointed, unless they want to wait until Halloween 2016 and think they can avoid spoilers on the Internet. Which, knowing how online discussions work, wouldn’t be an easy task in the slightest.
Other than the release date, not much else is known about the film. The plot remains a mystery for the most part, and there has been a lot of speculation about it. It may be a sequel to the original, or it may be a completely different story with a new set of characters. Some fans of the original have been worried that the producers may decide to make drastic changes that would take away too much from what made the first film good, but it’s too early to speculate on that, without any official news from the studio.
June 2016 is still a somewhat busy period in the entertainment industry, as the new film will have to compete against “Now You See Me 2”, as well as “Uncharted”, based on the video game franchise of the same name. Both are relatively big names in cinema, and it’s expected that they will draw a lot of viewers – but at the same time, the premises of both franchises aren’t really related to that of “The Conjuring”, so it’s difficult to say how big the overlap in potential viewers is.
If the producers have deemed it better to move the release to this slot instead of Halloween 2015 though, then they very likely have a clear idea of what they’re doing, and have performed sufficient market research to know what kinds of viewer numbers to expect. In any case, the interest in “The Conjuring 2” is quite strong, and a lot of people are excited to see the sequel. While most fans have been understandably disappointed by the news about the delay, there are also some who are happy that the film will receive more attention in its final polishing stages.