Monsters mashed: How Universal Studios fumbled its Dark Universe franchise

It was supposed to usher in a new age of gods and monsters, unleashing a new billion-dollar franchise for Universal Studios just as the studio’s Fast And Furious series was heading into its final lap. Bringing together the Universal Monsters—including the likes of Dracula, Frankenstein, the Wolf Man, and the Mummy—to create a new horror universe should have been an easy win for one of Hollywood’s most storied movie studios. After all, Universal’s monsters had ushered in the Hollywood cinematic universe long before the MCU, the DCU, or even Star Trek and Star Wars. But when Universal tried to blend its famed movie monsters into a reimagined Dark Universe, nothing turned out the way it was expected to. Instead of embarking on a new era, the whole thing fell apart following the release of 2017’s The Mummy, just as the franchise was supposed to be getting off the ground.

The Dark Universe’s woeful legacy is best signified by a photoshopped promo photo from 2017 featuring the announced cast for Universal’s horror cinematic universe—featuring Tom Cruise, Russell Crowe and Javier Bardem—a cast whose films never got made. The promo photo has emerged as both a meme and a warning for studios who try to plan too far ahead without first having a hit. So, what happened? How did such a surefire bet collapse in on itself and leave the Dark Universe as nothing more than a black hole in the age of IP?

To answer that, we first have to go back to 1999, when Universal made its first splashy attempt to resurrect one of their monsters for modern audiences. Stephen Sommers’ The Mummy blended action, adventure, romance, scares, and revolutionary special effects with a winning cast that included Brendan Fraser, Rachel Weisz, and Arnold Vosloo. The result worked, giving audiences a contemporary answer to Indiana Jones and providing accessible horror across a range of demographics.

The success of the film led to two sequels, the first of which, The Mummy Returns (2001) made Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson into a movie star and led to a spin-off prequel, The Scorpion King (2002), which spawned four direct-to-TV sequels (minus Johnson). The second sequel, The Mummy: The Tomb Of The Dragon Empire (2008) came too late, and while it managed to become a modest international hit, Iron Man and The Dark Knight were released that same summer, and providing clear evidence that tastes had changed. Universal opted to reboot the series by 2012, instead of pursuing a fourth film which would’ve seen the O’Connells head to South America to face a new Mummy antagonist, heavily favored to be portrayed by Antonio Banderas.

In between the second and third Mummy features, Universal attempted to expand their Universal monster franchise with Van Helsing (2004), which saw Stephen Sommers direct Hugh Jackman as the titular monster hunter taking on Frankenstein, the Wolf Man, Dracula, and Mr. Hyde in the 19th century. The film is a lot more fun than it often gets credit for, but it failed to connect in the way The Mummy films did, cutting its franchise potential off at the legs.

Hindsight and post-Dark Universe online chatter suggest that if Universal had had the good sense to pair Van Helsing with the O’Connells instead of rebooting they might have been able to resurrect both properties, a la what Fast Five (2011) did for the Fast And Furious franchise. But such a team-up was not meant to be. Instead, Universal pursued The Wolfman (2010), directed by Joe Johnston and starring Benicio del Toro, Anthony Hopkins, and Emily Blunt. It’s a handsome picture, but too old-fashioned and methodically paced to connect with modern audiences. And so, as these films tanked while superhero films, reboots, and Fast And Furious entries kept climbing to higher and higher box office numbers, a Dark Universe was broached.

Dracula: Untold (2014) was a precursor to The Mummy, not officially part of the Dark Universe branding, but not entirely outside of it either. The film, which tells the origin of Dracula, with Luke Evans as the vampire warlord Vlad the Impaler, was a taste of the approach that would saddle the Dark Universe. Universal wasn’t interested in highlighting the inherent horror and villainy of these characters, but in turning them into superheroes, complete with big budgets, VFX-enabled powers, and post-credit teases. Untold wasn’t a financial disaster, and did well enough for Universal to continue their ill-advised efforts to turn the Universal Monsters property into an action franchise.

For the brains behind Dark Universe, Universal turned to Alex Kurtzman, who successfully relaunched the Star Trek film franchise for J.J. Abrams, and Chris Morgan, who made the Fast And Furious a billion-dollar franchise. And to star, Universal brought in one of Hollywood’s most marketable names, Tom Cruise, which allowed the studio to set their sights on big, splashy, global talent to play their new cadre of monsters: Crowe as Dr Jekyll/Mr. Hyde, Johnny Depp as The Invisible Man, Bardem as Frankenstein’s monster, and Sofia Boutella as the Mummy. Additionally, The Rock was being pursued for the Wolf Man. But as attractive as building the franchise around Cruise seemed, it was also The Mummy’s undoing.

Cruise was given complete creative oversight and he brought in his long-term collaborating partner Christopher McQuarrie. Typically, a Cruise-McQuarrie collaboration is worth celebrating, but the duo did not have a strong handle on horror, turning The Mummy into a traditional action movie that made Cruise’s Nick Morton the center, and Sophia Boutella’s Ahmanet secondary, to the point where Cruise’s Morton was made the new “Mummy” by the end of the film. The final result of the film is a mess of conflicting ideas and tones, a movie made for no one outside of investors that ended up losing Universal $60 million to $100 million and costing them their Dark Universe.

What Universal failed to understand at the time was that imitation superhero movies were not what people wanted from their monster movies. The original Universal horror pictures from the 1930s and 1940s captivated and terrified audiences, and while they certainly don’t have the same effect on modern viewers, that same spirit was needed and that the Dark Universe failed to capture that. It would take Universal’s partnership with Blumhouse to finally make good on those expectations with Leigh Whannell’s brilliant reimagining of The Invisible Man (2020), which cost $7 million compared to The Mummy’s $195 million. Unconnected stories, by experienced filmmakers with a strong vision, it seems, may be the best path forward for Universal Monsters.

The pandemic hampered some of those plans and neither of Universal’s mid-budget Dracula movies released this year, Renfield and The Last Voyage Of The Demeter, gained any traction at the box office despite both being enjoyable adaptations. Yet neither box office failure had the weight of a cinematic universe riding on it, leaving the brand undamaged, though not without some caution for future Dracula adaptations.

Still, there’s hope. Whannell was reported to be working on a sequel to The Invisible Man back in 2020, and Derek Cianfrance is attached to a new version of Wolfman, starring Ryan Gosling, for Blumhouse. Whether these two projects ever cross over in the future remains to be seen, but if there’s a lesson to be learned from the OG Universal Monsters, it’s that cinematic universes formed organically have a much greater chance at longevity and remaining a bright spot amidst those universes that have gone dark.