A new incarnation of The Invisible Man lands in theaters from Blumhouse Productions this weekend, with producer Jason Blum admitting that, based on how this film is received, he’d love to continue to find new ways to revive other Universal Monster movies. Back in 2017, Universal Pictures announced that The Mummy was set to be the first entry in a series of reboots, dubbed the “Dark Universe,” but when that film fell flat with audiences and critics, the plans for the franchise were ultimately abandoned. With early reviews of Invisible Man quite positive, it would seem that Blum’s hopes will be realized in a matter of days.
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When asked by Bloomberg if he’d like to make more Universal Monster reboots, Blum confirmed, “I would love to.”
He added, “I’ve had some version of this conversation. Not a serious one. I would say to Universal, ‘What monsters are available that I could play around with?’ I would send those things to our seven favorite filmmakers. But I’m not going to talk to Universal until The Invisible Man comes out.”
After the release of The Mummy, director Bill Condon was developing a Bride of Frankenstein remake, only for that project to be delayed indefinitely, seemingly stagnated all progress on the Dark Universe. When the franchise was announced, Johnny Depp was revealed to be starring in a new take on The Invisible Man, with news of this reimagining from writer/director Leigh Whannell causing confusion among fans. Blum previously detailed what made this new approach to the familiar character different from what fans might have been expecting.
“It was like the Blumhouse version of The Invisible Man, it’s a lower-budget movie. It’s not dependent on special effects, CGI, stunts,” Blum shared with Collider. “It’s super character-driven, it’s really compelling, it’s thrilling, it’s edgy, it feels new. Those were all things that felt like they fit with what our company does. And it happened to be an Invisible Man story, so it checked both boxes. And we responded to it because I think Leigh is just an A+ director.”
He went on to detail that, rather than planning a sprawling and interconnected universe, his priority was to deliver compelling, isolated adventures.
“I don’t believe in saying ‘We’re going to do movies about this’ and then trying to find a movie about it,” the producer admitted. “So I didn’t believe in going and saying, ‘I want to do all these movies’, and then try to find directors to do them. We have a director who… we’ve also done six or seven movies with, pitched us this spectacular idea about Invisible Man. We told him to write it, he wrote it, then we took it to the studio and said, ‘We’d love to do this and this is what we would do with it,’ and they said yes.”
Blum also revealed that he has already received some pitches for other Universal Monsters, confessing, “We have actually, we haven’t figured it out yet, but we’ve looked at a couple older scripts and we would be open to doing that.”
The Invisible Man lands in theaters Friday.
Do you want Blum to adapt more of the Universal Monsters? Let us know in the comments below or contact Patrick Cavanaugh directly on Twitter to talk all things horror and Star Wars!
