This weekend at Wondercon, Warner Bros. Pictures held a special panel discussion highlighting their two major summer releases with Wonder Woman, and their horror offering, Annabelle Creation. Director David F. Sandberg (Lights Out), working from a script by Gary Dauberman (Annabelle, Within) goes back to the very beginning to tell an origin story of this creepy and iconic doll.  Several years after the tragic death of their little girl, a dollmaker and his wife welcome a nun and several girls from a shuttered orphanage into their home, soon becoming the target of the dollmaker’s possessed creation, Annabelle.

We had a chance to speak with Sandberg before the Warner Bros. panel at Wondercon about Annabelle Creation and what we can expect from this promising prequel.

 
HorrorBuzz: Why the change in the title,

David Sandberg: It was a conscious decision so that people would know it was, you know, a stand-alone movie. You don’t necessarily HAVE to have seen the first one, although it’s a bonus if you have because there are some references in there that you might not get if you hadn’t seen it. So it was mostly about that so that people knew it wasn’t the same thing again.

HB: With the huge success of Lights Out you definitely had a lot more freedom.

DS: And I felt like I knew what I was doing this time.

HB: You looked like you knew what you were doing before.

DS: Yeah but it was a challenge to come onto a film set, learning all these things as they were happening. This time around it was a lot more relaxed because I knew how movies were made here. I could have more fun.

HB: What was it like working on a PG-13 film as opposed to an R rated film.

DS: Well, when we made Lights Out, we didn’t set out to make a PG-13 movie. We just sort of made the movie and waited to see what rating it got. But on this one, you know, we didn’t discuss the rating,, but I knew the first Annabelle was R rated and The Conjuring was R rated, so I kinda knew, “yeah this one will probably be R rated.” so I would throw in a bit more blood here and there and have fun with it.

HB: How is it that you develop scares. In Lights Out, the short, you got the most perfect scare out of a tiny 2 minute short. It was just that one sting at the end and it was done.

DS: It’s both trying to have a lot of tension, not just one thing, but have scares on top of scares. I don’t like to do just the one jump scare and then it’s over.

HB: Like a cheap loud noise scare or…

DS:  Yeah I try to sustain it and actually build towards it.  You can even have big loud scares if you build towards them.

HB: How much did producer James Wan have in the process?

DS: Well he, he was involved in the writing of the script and there were things where he was like, “This should be in the movie.” But overall, he was very, “Go make this your own.” It was very liberating.

HB: What did you bring to the Annabelle franchise that you felt wasn’t there before?

DS: The is a much bigger movie. The first one was very contained, they were in an apartment. This one is about an orphanage with all these young girls, a large cast, a bigger, creepier setting.

HB: Does your wife have a cameo?

DS: Yes!

HB: What’s on the horizon for you?

DS: One is Lights Out 2 that we are working on. I’ve been very lucky that Lights Out did so well and that the studios were happy with how this turned out. So there are some very exciting things coming up.

That you can’t talk about just yet…

DS: (Laughs) No, no not yet.

The Warner Bros. panel discussion began shortly thereafter and included the world premiere if the official trailer for Annabelle Creation. You can read all about Mommy Fearists’ reaction to the terrifying trailer and extended clip we saw HERE.