In an unrelated post today, Deadline dropped the news that “Fargo” executive producer Noah Hawley will be scripting one of the films in Universal’s upcoming “classic monsters cinematic universe.” Thus far the only officially-announced entry in the interconnected series is The Mummy, set to be directed by Alex Kurtzman from a script by Jon Spaihts, leaving a number of the monsters up for the taking.
The first film in the series will be the reboot of The Mummy, which is already set for release on June 24, 2016. Another title previously attached to this idea was a reboot of the “Van Helsing” franchise, which had Tom Cruise attached to the title role. Kurtzman and “Fast and the Furious” producer Chris Morgan are spearheading the effort for Universal.
Featuring the likes of Dracula, the Invisible Man, Frankenstein’s monster, the Wolfman, and the Creature from the Black Lagoon, Universal released countless films featuring these and many more monsters from the 1920s to the 1950s. Though some of them did crossover in a number of films like Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein and House of Dracula, there has never before been a longstanding narrative on this scale featuring the monsters.