Universal's Dark Universe was supposed to be a connected series of monster movies, with Frankenstein, Bride of Frankenstein, Dracula, Creature from the Black Lagoon, Hunchback of Notre Dame, and Invisible Man all in the works before The Mummy was released in 2017.
The Tom Cruise-led movie bombed, however, and actors like Javier Bardem (Frankenstein's monster), Johnny Depp (Invisible Man), and Russell Crowe (Dr. Jekyll) all ended up moving on...after a high-profile photoshoot.
It was a major embarrassment for the studio, but Blumhouse Productions is now doing something with at least some of those properties; their version of The Invisible Man was a huge hit, while Ryan Gosling is attached to star in a new take on Wolfman. The question is, will the Dark Universe make a return?
"I'd love to be in charge of them," Blum admitted in an interview with Inverse when asked if he'd like to take the reigns of that universe. "I wish I was the right person to ask this, I’m just not. They let us produce Invisible Man and they’re going to let us produce Wolfman, but the monsters and their fate and the direction and what the monsters mean overall, that’s entirely still a question for Universal."
Universal's plan was to bring all these monsters together after Jekyll forms a monster-hunting organization called Prodigium, but keeping things simple and connecting these stories in other ways makes more sense. Ultimately, there's no real need to even have them all link up with each other.
What do you guys think?