After the almost laughable failure of the Dark Universe, which attempted to reinvent Universal’s classic stable of monsters as action heroes played by A-list stars, Blumhouse and Saw co-creator Leigh Whannell almost immediately showed the studio how it should be done.
Instead of a $150 million CGI-laded epic with Tom Cruise in the lead role, Jason Blum and Whannell partnered up for The Invisible Man, a $7 million psychological thriller with sci-fi and horror elements that placed the massively talented Elisabeth Moss front and center.
The sleeper hit would go on to earn $142 million at the box office, and before we knew what was happening, a slew of monster movies entered development. Several spins on Dracula, the musical Monster Mash, Elizabeth Banks’ The Invisible Woman, a Van Helsing reboot and more are now on the cards, with Whannell developing an updated version of The Wolfman with Ryan Gosling.
In a new interview with Collider, the Blumhouse chief teased that there are more top secret projects in the works behind the scenes, but he obviously wasn’t at liberty to divulge any names.
“We have two or three we’re developing. They’re not yet announced, so I can’t talk about them. But the status with Universal monsters is no different than it’s ever been. Universal is in charge of the Universal monsters. But we’ve come up with a few ideas that they’ve like for a few of their other ones. And hopefully, we’ll turn those into movies.”
Joe Johnston’s The Wolfman, Stephen Sommers’ Van Helsing, Dracula Untold and The Mummy hardly blazed an impeccable trail of 21st Century success for the Universal Monsters, but Blumhouse’s track record is one of the best in the business, so the characters look to be in supremely safe hands.
