By You may have forgotten that Universal is working on a big cinematic universe starring all of its classic movie monsters because the movie to kick it all off, The Mummy reboot, has been in production forever. Well, it was Dracula Untold for a bit since they kind of retconned the ending to fit into the universe, but now they’ve decided that that is no longer part of the universe so now it’s The Mummy. The point being is that a monster universe is coming… at some point.
Eric Heisserer and Jon Spaihts (Prometheus) are the screenwriters in charge of the Van Helsing reboot for this monster universe and they’re setting their goals pretty high. Heisserer said, “I can only say that early on, our inspiration for his behavior and his mannerisms was all in Mad Max.” It’s not clear if that means the later drafts lost that Mad Max feel or if it still has it, but that would be quite the departure from Hugh Jackman’s CGI, suckfest in that it would fit the character better and, you know, not suck.
Heissere also gave us some insight into the Universal Monster Universe as a whole, noting that the different monsters let them tackle different genres.
It’s early days right now. I can say that the decision that a lot of us made was to go and just write the best movie we could in our own corner and make sure it’s good on its own…and didn’t necessarily need to link arm-in arm-with anybody else. And to be tonally different from the other films. One may be a little bit more comedic, action-adventure-y, one can be very much a traditional horror piece. That kind of thing. And then we’ll see what happens as the projects evolve and we all get a chance to convene and talk, and make sure the movies feel like they’re all in the same world.
Sounds like a better plan than DC’s “stuff them all into one movie” tactic at least.
