The Invisible Man Director Hasn't Started to Think About a Sequel Yet

Landing in theaters this weekend is The Invisible Man and with writer/director Leigh Whannell not [...]

Landing in theaters this weekend is The Invisible Man and with writer/director Leigh Whannell not yet knowing how well the film will perform at the box office, he hasn't begun to speculate about potentially crafting a sequel. While the box office numbers might not be in, the film currently sits at 91% positive reviews on aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes with nearly 200 reviews, confirming its critical success, and with a production budget being approximately $7 million, this would bode well for the franchise's future. Additionally, with the original 1933 The Invisible Man inspiring sequels, there's a built-in notion of serializing the subject matter.

"In my last Hollywood Reporter interview right before Upgrade was released, I talked about my superstition that I have around box office," Whannell shared with The Hollywood Reporter. "You're on such tenterhooks when you put a movie out in the world. You can control everything in a movie: the costumes, the lighting, the editing. But, you can't control whether the world deems it worthy of seeing or not. That's the one thing that's out of your hands. For a control freak like a movie director, it drives you crazy. I haven't angered the movie gods by thinking about a sequel."

He added, "I feel like people don't believe me when I say that, but I promise you, hand on my heart, that any time a thought of a sequel drifts into my mind, I just push it out. I don't want to even acknowledge it until the movie is worthy of it. If the movie does well, I'm sure someone will call me and say, "Hey, what do you think about a sequel?" But, until that happens, I just have to block it out. I don't want to anger the movie gods."

It's easy to see why Whannell would be apprehensive about investing in the notion of a sequel, as part of the trouble with the last attempt at a reboot of an iconic Universal Monster movie was the studio putting too much emphasis on how the film would set the stage for a sprawling franchise.

Fans knew ahead of its release that 2017's The Mummy was meant to be a reboot of the 1932 film of the same name, with the studio announcing ahead of that film's release that the movie was launching its "Dark Universe" of Universal Monsters reboots. At the time, Johnny Depp was announced to be starring in an Invisible Man film, but when The Mummy was both a financial and critical disappointment, the entire concept was indefinitely delayed and seemingly scrapped.

Despite the title, this weekend's The Invisible Man has no connection to the original Dark Universe plans. The Invisible Man is in theaters now.

Do you hope the film gets a sequel? Let us know in the comments below or contact Patrick Cavanaugh directly on Twitter to talk all things horror and Star Wars!

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