By The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen wasn’t all bad. There was that inside out looking Hyde mosnter, a neat effect with John Dorian, and Sean Connery being utterly exasperated at how this would be the movie that made him quit acting. There’s also the Invisible Man who…. sure is there sometimes. Invisibility is odd in film because when the invisible person is using their powers, the audience can’t see anything. Horror usually works the best because the only thing scarier to what lurks in the shadows is something that can lurk literally anywhere, which I hope Universal understands as they set out to make the a new Invisible Man movie.
Technically being a Classic Movie Monster despite being nowhere near as popular as the others, Universal nevertheless announced they found a director to make a new film involving he cannot be seen. While no title or timeline is set for the film, Leigh Whannell, most recently of the great and bloody body horror movie Upgrade, is on as the director, which at least starts the project off on the right foot.
Additionally, Variety reported how this move along with reexamination of their monsters has put the Dark Universe on hold. Each monster movie will focus on horror first and foremost, with an “individualized approach…. shepherded by creators who have stories they are passionate to tell with them” at the helm, according to president of Universal productions’ Peter Cramer. Also, The Mummy was a failure that we should never stop laughing at.
The past few years I’ve really come around to horror, both good and schlock, and monster movies are usually interesting based off their effects and makeup alone. It is a bit ridiculous to see studios only now realize how incredibly difficult building an extended universe is and remembering that movies need to be self-contained to be good (isn’t that right, Crimes of Grindelwald?) but it’s a step in the right direction all the same. That is until Endgame makes a quadrillion dollars and executives forget all about it again.