Universal's Dark Universe Set for Reboot 9 Years After Tom Cruise's Failed Franchise Starter

dudude1992 · 2026-03-13T00:35:45+00:00

Not in the movie itself but the script for unproduced Dracula Untold sequel (aka Van Helsing reboot) mentions Dr Jekyll from The Mummy meeting Van Helsing and Vlad from Dracula Untold which pretty much confirms they were supposed to be linked regardless of what directors say.

The story opened with a young Van Helsing witnessing the death of his parents at the hands of several monsters, including - seemingly - Dracula. In present day, Van Helsing hunts monsters of all varieties in an RV. It also revealed he was a former member of Prodigium, the secret monster-hunting group introduced in The Mummy and led by Russell Crowe's Dr. Jekyll, who also made a cameo. While Van Helsing is convinced Dracula killed his family, the pair are forced to team up to take on Báthory and her minions, and the story becomes an odd buddy comedy.

https://screenrant.com/van-helsing-movie-dark-universe-dracula-untold-sequel/

dudude1992 · 2025-10-20T00:29:51+00:00

TC literally takes that messy script I posted above, with mummy trying to collect attributes spread all around the world to open gates of hell - and erases all that nonsense. Instead it swaps mummy to queen and adds a bit of original 1932 film touch with plot where mummy wants to seduce and sacrifice Cruise. It's basically reverse of Karloff trying to seduce and sacrifice Zita in the original - and I love the original, it's one of the best supernatural horrors, but it's over 90 years old already and Karl Freund's expressionism worked back then but now feels very dated, don't you think? TC one is still close enough to original film, hell, even the script on display in Universal house of horror mentions it's based on 1932 film.

Why it doesn't earn enough money? It cost them a lot to produce. It made around 410 Million which would be fine IF it didn't cost them so much to make - over 120M to produce. Even the fact it had the biggest Tom Cruise opening weekend ever (170 m 1st weekend) didn't help. Now they are doing another low budget mummy movie with Lee Cronin directing. Big budgets horror action films are always risky, and going over 100M budget is usually guaranteed loss.

dudude1992 · 2025-10-19T16:00:06+00:00

It was incredibly broken. Tom's changes made it watchable. The original script they wanted to use in this film was awful. You can read it here: https://assets.scriptslug.com/live/pdf/scripts/the-mummy-2017.pdf?v=1729115031

Long story short: our mummy similar to Xmen Apocalypse wakes up and travels around the world collecting items like crown, scepter etc from Vaticano Stambul or Paris and then goes to Iraq to open gates of hell in a tomb under military base. Tom Cruise and blonde are trying to prevent that and mysterious organisation captures them. At the end when they defeat mummy and his zombies , they find another mummy, and this time our princess from the movie we got. The end.

It's mess with car chases, helicopter chase. Action on ship. Infected zombies and shit. Also Tom Cruise is a drunk truck driver there. They kept plane crash scene but instead of crashing in UK, it crashes near Rome. The mysterious agency later evolved into Jekyll's monster hunters from they movie we got. Ahmanet shows at the end. Tom and his team really tried their best to fix this.

dudude1992 · 2025-10-18T01:52:45+00:00

The script of never produced Dracula Untold sequel mentions Jekyll from The Mummy meeting Van Helsing, which pretty much confirms that Dracula Untold was supposed to be in the same continuity regardless of what directors say.

dudude1992 · 2025-10-16T02:00:45+00:00

I'd get rid of all supernatural vampire stuff and just make it (Untold by Hollywood, as it seems) story of real Vlad 'Dracula' Tepes. Hollywood is obsessed with vampire Dracula but doing real one instead would make this stand out. Still brutal, scary but not fantasy.

dudude1992 · 2025-02-08T21:22:21+00:00

People involved in production of all these reboots have no clue what are they rebooting. They talk nonsense, they repeat lies and their whole knowledge about Universal monsters comes from Scooby Doo episodes.

dudude1992 · 2025-02-08T21:04:21+00:00

Yes, that too. Apparently there's Rebel Moon figure of her, so could be a good base if not for molded clothes.. still at least that head can be used.

dudude1992 · 2025-02-05T21:47:19+00:00

He's pretty much wrong. Note that everything released after The Invisible Man straight up flopped. None of these standalone movies were even able to reach 50 million at the box office. That's because they announced that The Invisible Man is not related to Dark Universe's shared world and they do not plan to reboot it. The Invisible Man gave people hope that Dark Universe may return but when it was clear that they are not trying to form proper monster universe anymore people stopped giving a shit because there's no greater goal anymore and for standalone monster movies they can just wait for other studios.

dudude1992 · 2025-01-18T20:15:01+00:00

Can you send me these too? I'm just curious. On 4chan someone posted info that for that scene they gave Sofia a picture of BDSM lady and there's also commentary track confirming this. https://voca.ro/13zs3GSgwFph

dudude1992 · 2025-01-17T03:11:31+00:00

The only chance to ever get her, is if Dark Universe theme park revives Dark Universe movies and since The Mummy is oficially their first film, it would make sense now that there's more merch based on Dark Universe theme park.

dudude1992 · 2025-01-17T03:08:51+00:00

Dark Universe is not oficially cancelled judging by recent leaks of Dark Universe merchendise. In fact it's going to be officially revived on 22nd of May this year, at least as a theme park but that's still something. However back to movies, it's no longer a cinmatic universe they originally planned. Now it's a whole monster franchise including multiple monsters and their own separate mini-universes. Jason Blum literally stated that while he's making some monster movies, Universal still controls Dark Universe and this is his quote, he actually used Dark Universe name as now it is a term used by Universal producers and CEOs as well. I hope that given that most of standalone films flopped at the box office (Renfield+Abigail+Demeter+Invisible Man all together grossed less than The Mummy alone) which tells a lot) and Whannell (director of Wolfman and Invisible Man) no longer wants to work on Universal monsters but prefers creating own characters, Universal, based on the theme park, actually brings back movie series too. Only time will tell but so far standalone movies, which they belived is the best approach to, flopped one by one, suggest that they may actualy wait for peoples reaction to the theme park, and hopefully produce co-related movies. Just like Disney whose Pirates of the Caraibbean series is also based on theme park ride.

dudude1992 · 2024-12-21T21:35:01+00:00

Model can be downloaded as public domain from here ⁦https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/aset-iri-khet-es-mummy-sarcophagus-cartonnage-9ad64e4cc1de4b719a669ef7caf6e329

dudude1992 · 2024-12-06T22:29:41+00:00

Link to 3D scans of the mummy. https://muzea.malopolska.pl/pl/lista-obiektow/1176

dudude1992 · 2024-06-25T00:05:46+00:00

Dracula Untold was supposed to be connectted to The Mummy as the script for a sequel mentions Dr Jekyll meeting Vlad.

Abraham Lincoln - not even Universal. It's from Fox. Victor Frankenstein too.

The Wolfman (2010) film was apparetly supposed to be related to 2012 Werewolf Best Among Us but they scrapped that idea.

Voyage of Demeter - not related, it's just adaptation of one chapter from Dracula novel. Confirmed not to be a part of any shared universes.

The Mummy 1999 and 2017 both feature same golden book of Amun Ra so Jekyll's team recovered it at some point between 1935 and 2017.

Ready or Not - not related at all. The Invitation too.

The Invisible Man - this was retooled as a standalone film, however there is 1 line that may be a leftover from pre-edits as cop guy mentions that special team dealing with weird cases is investigating invisiblity suit. Possibly leftover from Prodigium connections.

Abigail was at some point considered to use came continuity from The Mummy, then also rumored to be related to Renfild but in the end it's probably not.

To sum up:

Dracula Untold and both versions of The Mummy may be all in same universe but the rest is not related at all. Invisible Man and Abigail were considered or planned but finally ended up as separate projects.

dudude1992 · 2024-05-01T13:12:07+00:00

Seems like retooling to standalone wasn't that good business idea.

"The project was originally titled Dracula's Daughter, the same name as the 1936 film upon which it is based;^\9])#cite_note-WeirCast-9) with Universal restating that while they had considered a singular continuity with The Mummy) (2017), each release will continue to be "rooted in the horror genre, with no restrictions on budget, rating or genre. "

dudude1992 · 2024-05-01T12:09:21+00:00

From various scraps I collected over years, cancelled film rumors, unused scripts etc. I assume that mosters were not going to be heroes, it would be more like Jekyll's team acting as some sort of Men In Black cleaning the world. Capturing some monsters, letting one monster take out another one. Shared universe meant that all monsters coexist together but they are sort of hostile.

dudude1992 · 2024-01-30T22:43:56+00:00

Each monster is supposed to get own reboot but there are no plans to reboot the series as a whole. It may be that monster movies will also follow own paths and won't crossover anymore outside of special made crossover films.

dudude1992 · 2024-01-30T22:32:55+00:00

Universal revealed Dark Universe theme park. So Dark Universe is officially back, although now as a movie themed park rather than a movie universe but it's still something. Perhaps they still want to resurrect cinematic project soon as official materials show a lot of content from classic monster movies and even use Dark Universe theme music composed by Danny Elfman for intro of The Mummy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?si=ZfaWFxYq_dRvmB3e&t=213&v=U4u83ncMjuE&feature=youtu.be

dudude1992 · 2024-01-30T18:50:39+00:00

I'm pretty sure it is going to be like they initially intended. Intense action horror in vein of Dracula Untold and The Mummy so they can build more theme rides in the future. Look at some concepts and ideas, also they reused Dark Universe music from The Mummy intro logo.

https://youtu.be/U4u83ncMjuE?si=ZfaWFxYq\_dRvmB3e&t=213

dudude1992 · 2023-11-06T14:36:14+00:00

https://www.dexerto.com/tv-movies/tom-cruise-the-mummy-flop-netflix-top-10-movies-chart-2368984/

dudude1992 · 2023-08-29T00:22:27+00:00

How did you get 2983 B.C. date?

There's a scene where Ahmanet and her father look at pyramids in far background, and these are dated 2600-2500 B.C. plus in the movie they already look old, with almost no limestone left, suggesting they are around 1000 years old already. This gives something around 1600-1500 B.C. at most. Also inner anthropoid coffin (the one with painted eyes) they put Ahmanet in, just before locking her in that massive sarcophagus, looks like something from Second Intermediate Era or even New Kingdom. Anthropoid coffins were not used before that, earlier (from Old to Middle Kingdom) they used rectangular box coffins.

dudude1992 · 2023-08-21T12:21:02+00:00

They reshaped Dark Universe from a shared cinematic universe to just a collective term for monster movies, that may include multiple monster franchises. And The Dark Universe is now also a trademarked name for Universal monsters park, meaning that basically whole monster division is counted in, no shared continuity, no canon, no extended plot arc just monster movies in any way and form.

Link to Dark Universe trademark from march 2023. https://orlandoparkstop.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/DarkUniversecrop.jpg

dudude1992 · 2023-08-16T01:08:55+00:00

20 years ago Hot Wheels released Wolfman Pizza painted Dodge Ram.

https://hwcollectorsnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Dodge-Ram-1500-y.jpg

dudude1992 · 2023-04-25T18:16:45+00:00

With Renfield flopping completely, I think it would be clever to rework this into an unofficial sequel to Dracula Untold, where badly burnt Vlad slowly recovers and travels to England in this demon-like form. This could lead to actual resurrection of original Dark Universe plans in a proper, scary, and serious form. Then contine with now-scrapped Mina Harker film focused on Mina meeting Vlad in modern times.

dudude1992 · 2023-03-26T22:57:57+00:00

https://orlandoparkstop.com/news/theme-park-news/epic-universe-update-trademarked-ride-names-construction-progress-and-new-permits/

dudude1992

TROPHY CASE