Universal admits that the Dark Universe was “a failed attempt”

Universal’s ambitious attempt at a Dark Universe — a series of movies that would do for classic movie monsters what the MCU did for Marvel superheroes — looked doomed from its first proper movie, The Mummy, back in 2017. Now, the studio appears to have pulled the plug on the whole interconnected universe idea.

So who would have occupied the Dark Universe? Well, the Mummy, to start. We also would have seen classic Universal monsters like Frankenstein, Dracula and the Invisible Man, among many others. But after The Mummy tanked, the idea lay dormant for a while.

The Mummy currently sits at a dismal 16% on Rotten Tomatoes. It also faltered badly at the domestic box office, even though it did pretty well overseas.

The next movie in the franchise was supposed to be Bride of Frankenstein, but since there was little to no demand for another movie in the franchise, Universe decided to pass on the movie and pursue other ideas.

Speaking as part of The Hollywood Reporter’s studio head roundtable, Universal chairwoman Donna Langley outlined where things went wrong:

"We had an attempt at interlocking our monsters and it was a failed attempt. What we realized is that these characters are indelible for a reason, but there’s no urgency behind them and certainly the world was not asking for a shared universe of classic monsters. But we have gone back and created an approach that’s filmmaker-first, any budget range."

This means that we’re not going to see all these monsters interact with each other. Instead, we’ll see some spooky standalone films, like The Invisible Man starring Elizabeth Moss:

The Invisible Man is directed by Leigh Whannell (Insidious, Saw), and I think we can all agree that it looks better than The Mummy. The movie lands in theaters on February 26.

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