Is Last Voyage of the Demeter Connected to Radio Silence's Universal Monsters Movie? Producers Weigh In

is The Last Voyage of the Demeter have a secret connection to the new Universal Monster Movie by Radio Silence?

By Kofi Outlaw - August 10, 2023 05:21 pm EDT

The Last Voyage of the Demeter opens in theaters this week, giving horror fans a new look at one of the most vague portions of Dracula's legend: his voyage from Romania to England, where he took up residence at Carfax Abbey, in his pursuance of his lost love, Mina Harker. Director André Øvredal (Tollhunters) does an admirable job of turning Dracula's cross-continent voyage into a slasher-style tale of gothic doom – but could it be even more than that?

Universal Pictures has been working since the 21st century began to turn its iconic library of monster movie creatures (Dracula, Frankenstein, The Wolfman, The Invisible Man, The Mummy, The Creature from the Black Lagoon) into a successful blockbuster franchise movie brand. In the 2010s we got Dracula Untold, a story about Dracula's first transformation into a vampire

Without dropping any SPOILERS, it's revealed by the end of the movie that The Last Voyage of the Demeter could be just the beginning of a battle against Dracula – or at the very least, the establishment of monster-hunters that track and fight these beasts through the ages.

After helping the Scream franchise find its way into the modern era, horror-filmmaking collective Radio Silence (directors Tyler Gillett and Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and producer Chad Villella) were announced to be making their own Universal Monster movie – one that once carried the conspicuous title of "Dracula's Daughter."

So, is The Last Voyage of the Demeter the first chapter in a larger Universal Monsters movie storyline?

"I will not encourage, deny or sway anything in terms of rumors along those lines," producer Brad J. Fischer told ComicBook.com.

Fishcer's credits include both Oscar-level works like Black Swan and Zodiac, as well as big franchise films like Mission: Impossible 7 and Transformers: Rise of the Beasts. As he sees it, Universal doesn't even need to build a franchise universe in the Marvel sense: they have everything to gain from just finding new ways to explore these iconic monster stories:

"Look, Universal rightly has a crown jewel in their Monsters Universe," Fischer said. "And the extent to which those stories as they're coming to life again can find points of intersection, that's really exciting. Here, just in Dracula, here's a story that lives in canon in the book that had never been told before on this canvas, other than to the extent that it was connected tissue in some of those other films. The fact that nobody had ever told the story of what happened on the ship is just a testament to how much storytelling opportunity and genre opportunity there is in not just Dracula, but that whole [universe]."

Universal already had a hit with its clever post-Me Too vision of The Invisible Man (2020), while the studio struck out big with a comedic satire take on Dracula earlier this year (Renfeild). It will be interesting to see how The Last Voyage of the Demeter does in theaters, and how it frames Universal's treatment of Radio Silences's film.

The Last Voyage of the Demeter is now in theaters.

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