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'It Chapter Two,' 'The Nun' scare up new footage at Comic-Con's horror-filled first night

SAN DIEGO — “What’s up, Losers?”

Bill Hader gets the adult version of the Losers’ Club from last year’s horror hit “It” back together in first footage from "It Chapter Two" (in theaters Sept. 6, 2019), which was shown Wednesday night at Comic-Con.

The sequel has been filming in Toronto for only a couple of weeks, but a behind-the-scenes featurette that premiered at the “ScareDiego” presentation of the geek culture extravaganza showed glimpses of the adult characters played by Hader, James McAvoy, Jessica Chastain and others. The Losers reunite to defeat Pennywise (Bill Skarsgard), 27 years after their last run-in with the evil clown.

Director Andy Muschietti teased more frightening situations in “Chapter Two,” enough where fans should “bring adult diapers,” although the freaky Pennywise appeared only briefly in the video. Instead, two women took up the scary slack at “ScareDiego”: the very unholy lady at the heart of “The Nun” (out Sept. 7), a new horror flick spinning out of executive producer James Wan’s “The Conjuring” universe, and the kid-snatching title character of “The Curse of La Llorona” (April 19, 2019).

Directed by Michael Chaves, “La Llorona” is based on the Mexican folk legend of a woman named Maria who finds her husband in the arms of a younger woman and drowns her two young boys in a fit of jealousy. After killing herself in the same waters, she’s cursed to walk the Earth for all time looking for other children to call her own.

Set in the 1970s, “The Curse of La Llorona” centers on a social worker and widow (played by Linda Cardellini) who has to protect her youngsters when they start hearing the weeping ghost’s cries and seriously bad stuff starts happening around them. Naturally, the little ones are creeped out by La Llorona, clad in a white dress with a veil surrounding her ghoulish face and eerie eyes that stream black tears.

“La Llorona lives and breathes in our culture,” said star Patricia Velasquez, who grew up in Mexico. “Personally, I’m a believer in La Llorona. Even though it’s a story that we tell our children so they behave, if you ask one Latin person at 60, 70 years old if they have stopped believing in La Llorona, they will say no.”

Her co-star Raymond Cruz threw in some scathing political humor: “It’s a very timely film. It takes place in the '70s but La Llorona predates Trump by 200 years in separating Mexican children from their parents.”

But before La Llorona shows up, audiences have the demonic star of “The Nun” to look forward to on the big screen. Played by Bonnie Aarons, she started as the primary foe of paranormal experts Ed (Patrick Wilson) and Lorraine Warren (Vera Farmiga) in 2016’s “The Conjuring.”

“The Nun,” though, is “our origin story for everything that comes afterward” in the “Conjuring” franchise, said director Corin Hardy. The film takes place in the 1950s, when the Vatican sends Father Burke (Demian Bichir) and young Sister Irene (Taissa Farmiga, sister of Vera) to investigate a suicide at a Romanian convent.

Hardy filmed in castles and villages in Romania, which was a treat for Bucharest-born actress Ingrid Bisu. “It was awesome to be known hopefully for something different than 'Dracula.' We’re ready for something fresh,” she said, laughing. Bisu also was glad the crew was able to experiencing Romanian culture: “They were shocked by the amount of sour cream that we eat. We eat it with fried sardines and cabbage – my mouth is watering just thinking about it.”

Farmiga gave a shout-out to her onscreen foil Aarons (“She just gets so much joy out of scaring the [stuffing] out of you”) and revealed how she sloughed off the horror at the end of the day. “I get in bed in my hotel all alone and the demon nun is knocking on the brain, and I start meditating and I breathe and I count, and I don’t let her come in.”

Wan announced another addition to the "Conjuring" franchise: a third "Annabelle" film, written and directed by Gary Dauberman. Slated for release next summer, the movie picks up with the possessed doll being taken to the Warrens’ home and getting housed in the artifacts room where she can’t do any more harm. Yet she wreaks havoc and awakens an evil within the place that targets the Warrens’ 10-year-old daughter. The doll “activates all the other haunted artifacts in that room,” Wan said. "So it’s basically ‘Night at the Museum’ with Annabelle!”