The Mummy's debut during its opening weekend at the box office. In 2017, the latter film served as Universal's attempt to kickoff the Dark Universe franchise, a shared universe initiative combining their classic movie monsters. As many know by now, The Mummy failed critically and commercially, putting a premature stop to Universal's plans. But rather than shelve the iconic characters, the studio decided to take things in a different direction by partnering up with Blumhouse to produce micro-budget horror films based on the properties.
First out of the gate is The Invisible Man, which stars Elisabeth Moss as a woman haunted by her abusive ex-boyfriend. The film received universally positive reviews from critics, with many praising it as a timely and scary update of the franchise. That word-of-mouth could only mean good things for The Invisible Man's box office prospects, and now the numbers show the movie got off to an excellent start.
Per The Invisible Man cost only $7 million to make, a fraction of The Mummy's lavish production budget.
This proves Universal had the right idea with the Invisible Man approach, as the film is already in the black. Its current global gross stands at $49.2 million, a number more than seven times the production budget. Based on these results, it wouldn't be surprising if Universal and Blumhouse moved forward on other monster movies, following the Invisible Man formula. Wisely, the studio didn't officially announce any release dates ahead of The Invisible Man's release, but now that they know there's an audience for this style of film, they'll probably be encouraged to put together a slate. In all likelihood, any Universal Monsters films will be standalone in nature, rather than trying to force a shared universe. The studio learned that lesson the hard way.
Coming strong out of the gates was great for The Invisible Man, and odds are it'll be an even larger hit by the time it bows out of theaters. There are still a few weeks until A Quiet Place Part II opens, so The Invisible Man should have nice legs over the first half of March. Even with new arrivals like Onward and The Way Back premiering this coming week, The Invisible Man won't be facing much in the way of direct competition for a while. So, the film will be able to pad its totals and turn a nice profit for Universal.
Source: Variety
