For all intents and purposes, the Dark Universe was an unmitigated disaster and the perfect example of how not to build a shared cinematic universe. Completely abandoning what the characters were all about in the first place, Universal decided to reinvent their stable of classic monsters as action heroes played by A-list movie stars, with a succession of projects all mapped out in advance, many of which already had talent attached.
Tom Cruise’s The Mummy would have eventually led to Johnny Depp’s The Invisible Man and Javier Bardem’s Frankenstein, while Angeline Jolie was circling The Bride of Frankenstein and Dwayne Johnson was once in talks for The Wolfman, and it would all be tied together by the shadowy Prodigium organization led by Russell Crowe’s Dr. Jekyll, who was basically the Dark Universe’s Nick Fury.
It was a terrible idea executed worse, and the mythology was dead after a single film. However, we’re hearing from our sources – the same ones who told us Ben Kingsley would be back as Trevor Slattery in Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings long before it was confirmed – that Marvel Studios could be planning their own Dark Universe, except obviously not terrible.
The franchise has already introduced the cosmic, mystic and now multiversal aspects of the mythology, so why not the supernatural? According to our information, comic book favorites including Moon Knight, Ghost Rider, Blade, Man-Thing, Werewolf by Night, Hellstrom and more could all be part of a horror-influenced pocket of the MCU, which would hypothetically allow any projects to dive into uncharted and terrifying territory without having to tie themselves in knots connecting to a world where Jimmy Woo sits at home practicing card tricks.
