Let's all laugh at the Universal Dark Universe

god i very badly wanna see vin diesel scrap with the creature from the black lagoon

FYI for those unaware, the next film in the saga is Bride of Frankenstein. Before they've made a Dark Universe version of Frankenstein, yes. And they apparently do have Phantom of the Opera and the Hunchback of Notre Dame lined up. I kinda don't even know what to say. Good luck, I guess?

I do hope that there's a slew of quickie rip-off adaptations of these public domain properties released around the same time that totally muddy the waters of this endeavor.

phantom and hunchback aren't even really canonical 'universal monsters' ffs

I do hope that there's a slew of quickie rip-off adaptations of these public domain properties released around the same time that totally muddy the waters of this endeavor.

ilx pre-covers the universal dark universe?

Why not! Dust off your camcorders, folks.

I want a movie in which Mary Shelley, Bram Stoker, H. G. Wells, R. L. Stevenson, Victor Hugo, and Gaston Leroux are awakened from the grave to reclaim their intellectual property.

yes turn movies into the news what a great idea it will take no imagination at all

― AdamVania (Adam Bruneau), Tuesday, June 6, 2017 8:16 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Right? When have monster movies or horror films ever dealt with the cultural zeitgeist or deep-seated social anxieties? The George Romero "Dead" movies were not in any way metaphorical, nor was the original "Godzilla."

"The Host" also had nothing whatsoever to say about American militarism and imperialism, it was just a monster movie and THAT'S ALL.

I mean, also, they'll probably manage to mess up the psychological metaphors that are there already in the classic films

By changing things around a bit but not enough, so as with most re-makes you end up with slop

^ Trenchant

wat if Frankenstein but made by isis

dotor jekyll but good 1 is bad

Who is the real monster, Frankenstein or that guy who made him whose name I don't know?

invisible man but he's partially visible

I have seen the Dark Universe, yawning,
Where the blockbusters cruise without aim;
Where they cruise in their "horror" unneeded, each ghost held aloft by a name.

Bride of Frankenstein, but also Frankenstein cuz she cannot decide on gender so he keeps taking out the stitches to swap out the junk.

Get thee to a Frankenhooker, Øystein.

omg

It's not quite what you describe but there are indeed some Frankensteinian gender-swapping hijinks in that acclaimed film.

universe where every1 is invisible xcept one guy and he is the visible man

Also it's Dark

"Truly, we humans were the real 'invisible man' after all."

"We have met the wolfman, and he is us."

'he who fights with universal monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a universal monster. and if you gaze long into a black lagoon, the creature also gazes into you'

"The only thing we have to fear is a dracula."

Knowledge is knowing that Frankenstein is not the monster. Wisdom is knowing that Igor is the bride.

lol @ bothering with this 'universe' crap for a load of long out of copyright characters

Ned probably started with that thread title, but crumpled it up

It was a process of experimentation

now i'm imagining ned working in the lab, late one night

Is anyone actually planning to see The Mummy?

*crickets*

even for slumming hollywood shit this is getting toxic reviews

It doesn't look even a little bit good or interesting. Universal's previous foray into Mummy-dom doesn't exactly give me any confidence that they're on the right track this time.

Not so much for the sake of enjoying a schadenfreudegasm (which is just a pleasant side-effect), but I kinda want this to die on the vine in the hopes that these studios will stop thinking they can grow some expansive franchise out of a single, untested seed.

i thought the first mummy reboot movie with brendan fraser was dumb fun, but there's nothing appealing about this one at all afaict

i only just found out russell crowe is in this as dr jekyll, which seems like a particularly egregious misuse of the shared-universe shoehorn

Whut

It's just kinda fucking dumb, too. Because he will surely only appear AS Dr. Jekyll, leaving us all to ponder HMMM WONDER WHAT WILL HAPPEN WITH THIS MYSTERY MAN IN THE FUTURE, OH THE MYSTERY OF IT ALL.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

It was great working with @RussellCrowe on #TheMummy (even though we were kicking each other's ass). pic.twitter.com/ZfPOWb7pVL

— Tom Cruise (@TomCruise) June 7, 2017

I think you mean licking, Tom.

crowe's wearing one black glove in that fight scene so i assume he's already afflicted by monsterism

fuck i just remembered that benicio del toro's wolfman only came out a few years ago and tanked too - man, they're really intent on doing this until something, anything sticks, aren't they

xposts Oh, that's just Russell being Russell.

http://i2.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/000/259/034/857.jpg

Yes, and when this one turfs out...well, obviously Bride of Frankenstein is the one that was REALLY intended to kick off the franchise. Naturally.

I was joking earlier about them pulling their '50s sci-fi stuff into the mix at some point, but decent remakes of that stuff (and yes, a fucking "universe" if they must) would be infinitely more interesting than them cranking out the 5,819,392,492,813th Frankenstein movie in existence.

i feel like there's potential to update frankenstein to explore contemporary stuff like genome-editing and growing spare parts for humans from scratch but uh let's say i don't have a lot of confidence they'll want to take any interesting approaches to the characters

Looking forward to the 2024 slate of Renfield vs. Igor, Mohel of Frankenstein, and Abbott & Costello Fey & Poehler Meet the Scorpion King.

FTFM Universal.

Only very very tangentially related because Scorpion King but I just saw the comedy issue of GQ on the stands yesterday, featuring everybody's favorite funnyman Dwayne Johnson on the cover.

https://media.giphy.com/media/l3q2MPtyq5CBzQcIU/giphy.gif

Apparently the success of The Invisible Man has inspired Universal to return to the Dark Universe: http://epicstream.com/news/TinyDiapana/Universal-Developing-New-Dracula-Movie-For-Its-Dark-Universe

the invisible man was good though

it was also made on a us$7m budget, unlike the mummy which cost a freaking bomb

giving it all to blumhouse is a decent strategy. might work.

we could be entering an era of decent hollywood movies that don’t cost liechtenstein’s gdp to make

seems like horror films are the only small movies that turn a reliable profit today.

Yeah I saw this last night and thought it was good. Have no idea wtf they’re gonna do with Dracula. Also assume the budget won’t be 7m.

imo they should cap the budgets just in case

Two of Kusama's previous films were on $1 million budgets (fifteen years apart).

Whannel's first film made $100 million on a $1 million budget, his second made $147 million on a $4 million budget, his third made $164 million on a $10 million budget, his fifth made $100 million on a $1.5 million budget, his sixth made $160 million on a $5 million budget, his seventh (first as director) made $113 million on an $11 million budget, his eighth had a $3 million budget, and The Invisible Man has made $105 million in two weeks on a $7 million budget.

Blumhouse's most expensive movies to date iirc are $15 million for BlacKkKlansman, a co-production with a name director, a couple of stars, dozens of speaking roles & even more extras, and shitloads of outdoor and indoor location shoots; and $20 million for Glass, which had to pay M. Night Shyamalan, Bruce Willis, Sam Jackson, and James McAvoy, who probably has a reasonable quote after a bunch of X-Mens.

It's very unlikely that they're not going to keep the budget low on Kusama's Dracula.

and the one that kinda flopped was upgrade, which is amazing

Returned about six times its budget, on almost zero promotion! Absolutely a big success, just only made a fraction of his horror & sequel flicks.

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/invisible-man-helmer-leigh-whannell-direct-ryan-gosling-wolfman-1302467

Aaaand now Blumhouse and Whannell are now attached to a Wolfman reboot for Ryan Gosling. "The script has been described as having a vibe that evokes Network (1976) and Nightcrawler (2014)." So pseudo-found footage of Larry Talbot yelling "I'm flea-bitten as hell, and I'm not going to take this any more"?

i was recently thinking that if ace in the hole were done today, the reporter would throw people in wells and never think twice about it.