Summary

• The Dark Universe failed due to bad planning and lack of clear direction, causing confusion among potential directors and revealing poor franchise planning.
• Even if The Mummy had been successful, the Dark Universe would have struggled due to its poor planning and difficulty of sustaining a shared cinematic universe.
• While the Dark Universe concept may be dead, unrelated movies featuring Universal Monsters continue to be released, and modern remakes of the Universal Monsters are likely to rise again following the success of The Invisible Man.

In the late 2010s, Universal Studios attempted to launch an interconnected series of movies centered around the classic Universal Monsters, and recent comments from one of the series' potential directors shed some light on why the aptly-titled "Dark Universe" failed so spectacularly. The Dark Universe was set to feature some of Hollywood's biggest stars as Universal's horror icons, including proposed castings like Johnny Depp as the Invisible Man, Javier Bardem as Frankenstein's Monster, Sofia Boutella as the Mummy, and Russell Crowe as Van Helsing. The cinematic universe never got off the ground as the first film, 2017's The Mummy starring Boutella, Crowe, and Tom Cruise, was a box office disaster.

Now, an update has been provided about the status of the Dark Universe and the Universal Monsters in general. Bride of Frankenstein's original director Neil Burger revealed to Screen Rant just how much instability was present in the background of the proposed shared universe. Burger's comments provide the insight that has been missing as to why the Dark Universe never even got off the ground back in 2017.

The Dark Universe Suffered From Bad Planning

A lack of clear direction doomed the cinematic universe from the start.

In an interview with Screen Rant, Neil Burger provided a glimpse at the indecision that swirled around the earliest stages of the proposed Dark Universe. Burger noted:

But they went around in a lot of different directions about how they wanted to use their dark universe, all those old movies. And did they want to update them? Did they want to do them as old? Do they want to do them, period? What did they want to do with them? Did they want to change the, regender them or whatever it is?

Burger's comments indicate just how much confusion there was, even for one of the franchise's potential directors. Burger's Bride of Frankenstein would have theoretically been one of the foundational characters in the cinematic universe, so for him to have so little clarity about the franchise's overall direction proves how poorly the series was planned.

That idea is further emphasized by the fact that Universal couldn't even decide which movie would kick the franchise off. As noted by opportunity to launch the Dark Universe before the decision was ultimately made to use The Mummy instead. After the film's release, that connection was downplayed, but the film's producer even confirmed that there was hope that Evans' Dracula could make an appearance in The Mummy to plant the seeds of the shared universe.

The Dark Universe Likely Would've Struggled Even If The Mummy Had Worked

The poor planning would have caught up soon even if The Mummy was successful.

A shared cinematic universe is difficult enough to sustain with successful movies, and even massively popular properties like the DC Universe haven't managed to get it right for very long.

Obviously, The Mummy being both a critical bomb and a box office disaster doomed the potential franchise from the start, but even if it had been a success, the Dark Universe would probably have struggled to find its footing given the poor planning at its core. A shared cinematic universe is difficult enough to sustain with successful movies, and even massively popular properties like the DC Universe haven't managed to get it right for very long. The Universal Monsters have plenty of notoriety and history to draw on, but without pitch-perfect coherence and planning right from the start, the Dark Universe would have likely foundered after no more than a few movies.

Are Any Dark Universe Movies Still Happening?

The Universal Monsters will stay alive, but a shared universe may be dead and buried.

Nothing resembling the Dark Universe has materialized since the failure of The Mummy, and it seems unlikely that the franchise concept will be revived any time soon. However, since 2017, there have been several unrelated movies featuring Universal Monsters, and given their long-standing popularity, it seems likely that they will continue to appear on the silver screen in some form. Two separate Dracula films have been released since 2017: the horror-comedy Renfield and the more serious The Last Voyage of the Demeter, which is centered around Dracula's journey from Transylvania to Great Britain.

A reworked version of The Invisible Man was born out of the ashes of the Dark Universe version that was supposed to star Johnny Depp. Starring Elisabeth Moss, Leigh Whannell's 2020 version of The Invisible Man was a major success with critics and at the box office, further encouraging stand-alone adaptations. A modern remake of The Wolf Man from director Derek Cian starring Ryan Gosling is reportedly on the way from Blumhouse, although there is no timeline for its release yet. With the success of The Invisible Man acting as a blueprint, it's likely only a matter of time before modern remakes of the Universal Monsters rise again.

Source: The Hollywood Reporter