The SDCC (San Diego Comic Con) officially runs from Thursday to Sunday, the ultimate gathering of comics, multimedia and the general fantastical. However as the event has expanded in physical size it’s also filling out every available moment, including a preview night on the Wednesday that was once on Thursday.
For 2018 that meant a return for ScareDiego, a round-up of some of the upcoming horror offerings that will be released / escape in the months to come. New Line were on hand to show some exclusive footage and imagery from their titles. Perhaps one of the most anticipated is It: Chapter 2, the follow-up to the remake of Stephen King’s coulrophobic masterpiece. The original tv two-part adaptation of It went back and forth between the time the kids of Castle Rock first encountered the demonic Pennywise and their ‘contemporary’ second battle. The remake concentrated only on those adolescent years and the ‘Chapter 2‘, which started filming last month for a September 2019 release, will be the adult side. The audience was shown some behind-the-scenes footage and got their first glimpse of the older cast, which now includes James McAvoy, Bill Hader, Jessica Chastain, James Ransone, Andy Bean, Jay Ryan and Isaiah Mustafa with Bill Skarsgård returning as Pennywise.
The Nun (due to open 7th September) is a spin-off / prequel to the previous Conjuring films and features the scary apparition of the title – it details events that began the unholy chain of events seen in the films to date. The Conjuring films have had mixed-to-strong reviews for their old-school jump scares and growing mythology and they’ve generated enough genre box-office to keep fans happy. After showing footage and the poster for the film to a good reaction from the crowd, it was also announced that there will also be another follow-up to the 2014 Annabelle film and its notably profitable (a $15m budget with a $300 million return) sequel Annabelle: Creation (2017)… which is also technically part of that Conjuring franchise and deals with a demonic doll encountered early in the first Conjuring outing. The as yet untitled film has had its tentative release date set for July 2019. The original Annabelle film was inspired by a real doll and spooky events said to surround the exhibit, though the real life version looks considerably less scary.
A major highlight of the horror night was also footage from The Curse of La Llorona (due for release 19th April 2019) which is inspired by a real-life legend of a ghostly woman who was said to snatch children away from their Latin-American homes and unleash horrors on any who stood in her way. Set in the 1970s it features Linda Cardellini as a Los Angeles social worker investigating the stories who finds similar events stating to happen within her own family.
