Universal had huge, ambitious plans for their “Dark Universe,” a shared universe franchise that would reimagine and tie together all of their iconic monster movies. Unfortunately, those plans hit a major roadblock when the first entry, 2017’s The Mummy, was met with a tepid fan reception, and ended up losing close to $100 million at the box office.
Since then, we’ve heard very little about how the franchise was proceeding. Soon after The Mummy was released, producers Alex Kurtzman and Chris Morgan (who effectively assembled the creative team behind the Dark Universe) exited the franchise, and the next scheduled entry, Bride of Frankenstein starring Angelina Jolie and Javier Bardem, was pulled from the release schedule. Work also seemingly ceased on a planned Invisible Man film starring Johnny Depp.
In January however, we got word that development on Bride of Frankenstein may have begun again, possibly separate from the Dark Universe. And just today, artist Robert Vargas posted on Instagram to say that he had just met with the Dark Universe team, and that “monster” things were in the works.
It’s a small update, but very interesting given most people’s assumptions that the Dark Universe was all but dead.
