By: Keaton Marcus

The Dark Universe is finally beginning to come together after filmmaker Leigh Whannell successfully rebooted The Invisible Man earlier this year with Elizabeth Moss. Now, with the Ryan Gosling-starring The Wolfman in development, Whannell has been hired once again to direct.

Universal Studios has been trying to hit it big time by making both remakes and films based on iconic creatures in general, and though they’ve had great success with their two Jurassic World movies, their dreams of having a shared cinematic universe has never really come together. Let’s take a little look into that history.

In 2004, Universal released a Van Helsing movie starring Hugh Jackman, which was an extremely dull ride. It also scored a mere 24% on Rotten Tomatoes while only making 300.1 million globally on a budget of 160 million. A disaster all around. Next up for the studio was 2010’s The Wolfman, and that didn’t do well either, scoring 34% on RT and grossing just 139.7M on a massive cost of 150 million. Ouch.

Then, Universal turned to reboots instead, releasing Dracula Untold in 2014, which did a bit better than the other two. Though it was a failure with the critics, with 24% on Rotten Tomatoes…it did earn back a more reasonable 70 million budget by earning 217.1 million dollars. Because of the little box office glory they got with Untold, Universal decided to start a “Dark Universe” by remaking The Mummy in 2017. This time with Tom Cruise in the leading role.

It was a true mixed bag. With the critics, it’s embarrassing to talk about, with 16% of reviewers giving it a Fresh rating, but there’s been some debate on whether it was a box office hit due to its solid foreign performance. In total, it made 409.2 million on a budget from 125-195 million dollars. So while it depends, it still wasn’t the big savior.

With 2020’s low-budget The Invisible Man being a success commercially and critically, things may start to come together. Universal has also hired Destroyer director Karyn Kusama to make a Dracula remake set in modern day. Assuming that both that and The Wolfman will be low budget like The Invisible Man, we may have another cinematic universe on our hands.