It’s interesting that the demonic nun known as Valak has become such a horror icon, starring in her own movie back in 2018 with a sequel on the way, because the character almost didn’t even make it into The Conjuring 2. As James Wan has noted in the past, Valak was actually a final hour replacement for a totally different demon. A demon he has now unleashed.

Over on Instagram this week, Wan shared a series of concept images and behind the scenes photos showing off the original demon that was going to be at the center of The Conjuring 2, noting that the beast’s design was actually inspired by the Dracula design Wan and his team had whipped up for a Castlevania project that never ended up coming to fruition!

Wan explains, “Here’s my first design of the demonic entity haunting the family and Lorraine. Aaron Sims (concept designer) and myself took inspiration from our Dracula design for a movie I was attached to a long time ago called Castlevania. @justin.raleigh/Fractured FX built an awesome animatronic suit, and we were going to augment it with CGI wings.”

“But alas, during editing, I deemed this beautifully designed/sculpted horned demon too out of left-field for the film,” he continues. “It needed to be more grounded and personal — something that would take Lorraine’s faith and try to test/corrupt it. I remember the real-life Lorraine Warren talking about her love and reverence for her nun friends, and a lightbulb went off — thus… the Demon Nun was born. So we went back and replaced all the Horned Demon with the Nun during additional photography.”

These images provide really cool insight into both The Conjuring 2 and Wan’s unmade Castlevania movie, showing just how close we came to Valak never existing at all…

 

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CONJURING 2 is one of my personal fav. I focused on character-storytelling above anything else. Here’s my first design of the demonic entity haunting the family and Lorraine. Aaron Sims (concept designer) and myself took inspiration from our Dracula design for a movie I was attached to a long time ago called Castlevania. @justin.raleigh/Fractured FX built an awesome animatronic suit, and we were going to augment it with CGI wings. But alas, during editing, I deemed this beautifully designed/sculpted horned demon too out of left-field for the film. It needed to be more grounded and personal — something that would take Lorraine’s faith and try to test/corrupt it. I remember the real-life Lorraine Warren talking about her love and reverence for her nun friends, and a lightbulb went off — thus… the Demon Nun was born. So we went back and replaced all the Horned Demon with the Nun during additional photography. I call the last image “Beauty and the Beast”. #Halloweenretrospect

A post shared by James Wan (@creepypuppet) on Oct 21, 2020 at 3:28pm PDT