History is littered with the discarded remains of failed cinematic universes, but the majority of them have come after Marvel Studios entered the fray and changed the entire complexion of cinema forever. There were a scant few who tried to replicate the MCU formula before it was even a thing, but Stephen Sommers’ Van Helsing is pretty indicative of the reasons why it rarely succeeded.
Having delivered an era-defining blockbuster with The Mummy and then followed it up with an equally successful but significantly less popular sequel, the filmmaker was then given carte blanche to cut loose with the rest of Universal’s monstrous back catalogue. The smart idea would have been to drip-feed the iconic creatures through a succession of sequels, but Sommers had no interest in restraint.
Hugh Jackman’s title hero instead came face-to-face with Jekyll and Hyde, Dracula, the Wolfman, Frankenstein, and all of their associated mythologies within the space of 131 minutes, and the end result was an exhausting bombardment of CGI, set pieces, exposition, and world-building that contained more than enough material for at least a trilogy.
The studio had high hopes for Van Helsing as a brand, with an animated prequel movie, a self-contained comic book story, and a video game all attempting to expand the lore. In the end, the $170 million epic squeaked past $300 million at the box office, found itself tossed onto the trash pile, and now there’s been a reboot in various stages of development for over a decade.
That’s still happening as was recently confirmed by director Julius Avery, but for those who prefer the Jackman vintage, it’s worth noting that Van Helsing is currently tearing it upon Starz, per FlixPatrol. It’s cultivated a deserved reputation as a camp cult classic in the 19 years since its release, but it had the undoubted potential to be so much more.
