Just when we thought we had finally escaped Universal’s Dark Universe, those damn public domain monsters just pulls us right back in. Just a couple of weeks after director Leigh Whannell remade The Invisible Man with Elisabeth Moss and a new timely tone for the horror maestros at Blumhouse, the studio is coming back with a new take on Dracula from Destroyer and Jennifer’s Body director Karyn Kusama. This comes from The Hollywood Reporter, which says its sources claim that the new Dracula will follow The Invisible Man’s lead with a modern-day setting and that it will most likely land at Universal (the studio hasn’t picked it up yet, but it has a first-look deal with Blumhouse and THR says it “isn’t about to let one of its iconic monsters escape the fold”). Kusama’s Dracula will also probably have a more reasonable budget than Universal’s last Dracula movie, 2014's Game Of Thrones-y epic with Luke Evans, which seems to be the key with projects like this.
The news of a new Dracula comes just a few days after we heard that James Wan was working on a very Frankenstein-sounding horror movie for Universal. Plus there’s the monster thing Paul Feig is doing… for Universal. And the Invisible Woman movie that Elizabeth Banks is making… for Universal (which is somehow completely unrelated to Elisabeth Moss’ Invisible Man). And the Dracula-related horror movie that Dexter Fletcher and Robert Kirkman are making… for Universal. But please, nobody jump to any conclusions and say anything about some kind of Dark Universe where Universal can revitalize all of its old monster characters and bring them together for some kind of team-up movie. That’s not going to happen. Wink.
No, seriously, it’s not. The Dark Universe is as dead as Count Dracula, who never comes back to life even though it really seemed like he was dead.