A few years ago Universal crapped the bed with their latest stab at The Mummy, a Tom Cruise-led fiasco intended to launch a new “Dark Universe” featuring the studio’s many classic monsters from the ’30s and ’40s. It didn’t work out so well. But this year they found great success with being less ambitious, while spending less money: They released The Invisible Man, an inexpensive and inventive reworking of the classic film. Its success inspired them to green-light other stand-alones, including their latest one: a more comic entry that reunites Channing Tatum with the directors of 21 Jump Street.
As per Entertainment Weekly, the very busy Phil Lord and Chris Miller have tasked Tatum for what’s described as a “modern day, tongue in cheek thriller” inspired by Universal’s classic monster movies. Details are thin on the ground, and it’s not clear if it will be a parody or which monsters, if any, it will feature. Maybe it’ll be somewhat in the vein of 1987’s Monster Squad, in which teens square off against Dracula, The Mummy, and the Wolf Man, who apparently has “nards.”
Starting with the 1931 Dracula, Universal’s line of monster movies helped make the then-struggling studio become one of Hollywood’s heavy-hitters. And it made stars of actors like Bela Lugosi, Boris Karloff, Lon Chaney Jr., even Oscar-nominated British thespian Claude Rains, who became a star with the 1933 The Invisible Man, despite only being seen once, at the very end. This year’s loose redo of that one starred Elisabeth Moss as a woman escaping spousal abuse, only for her tormentor to create a cloak that makes him invisible.
Meanwhile, Lord and Miller have more than rebounded from being booted off Solo: A Star Wars Story, which underperformed at the box office shortly before Spider-Man: Into the Multiverse, which they produced, exceeded expectations and even won them Oscars for Best Animated Feature. They’re currently working on that one’s sequel, a Ryan Gosling astronaut movie (not to be confused with this), and a reboot of the cult show that made them names, Clone High.
(Via EW)