It was also pretty helpful to have the assistance of both screenwriter Gary Dauberman and producer James Wan, given that the former has written three of the franchise films, and the latter has directed and/or produced all of them.
The Conjuring Universe has already done a good amount of timeline hopping, with Annabelle set before the two Conjuring movies, and Annabelle: Creation set before all of them, but one of the benefits of hiring Corin Hardy for The Nun was that he didn’t have to do a deep dive into the previous titles because he was already a fan.