You Won’t Believe These 5 Actors Once Considered for Universal’s Dark Universe

The Dark Universe is dead. It’s been dead for ages now. As the 2020s has featured deeply standalone modern updates of Universal Monsters like The Invisible Man, Wolf Man, and Renfield, it’s clear the idea of creating a 21st-century interconnected Dark Universe headlined by Dracula and Frankenstein’s monster has been long abandoned. The Dark Universe moniker only lives on at Universal theme parks. Otherwise, the franchise 2017’s The Mummy was supposed to start has been wiped from the Earth.

The Dark Universe is dead and buried but the grand ambitions for this saga live on as internet legend. Specifically, the big-name actors once eyeballed to play key monsters and humans in this saga fascinate the man. Would the Dark Universe have found some stability if it had secured these A-listers? That will eternally remain a mystery, as will how these five actors approached for Dark Universe roles would’ve fared in tentpole monster cinema. Welcome to a new world of gods and monsters, populated by these uncast Dark Universe performers.

5. Channing Tatum as Ven Helsing

For decades, Van Helsing and equivalent characters in pop culture were depicted as elderly men without question. In 2004, Hugh Jackman changed that forever with his solo Van Helsing movie. Now the character was associated in the minds of moviegoers with a younger beefcake. The Dark Universe considered following that tradition with the rumored casting of Channing Tatum as Van Helsing. Tatum was attached to a lot of mid-2010s blockbusters that never got off the ground, like a solo Gambit movie or a Ghostbusters spin-off with Chris Pratt. His Van Helsing was another one of those tentpoles that would never be realized, especially after Universal recalibrated its approach to movie monsters.

4. Scarlett Johansson for Creature from the Black Lagoon

For a Creature from the Black Lagoon update, you could just get a stunt performer in a motion-capture suit to perform the titular beast. However, any new remake of this classic horror film needs a prominent movie star to play the human lady Gill-Man falls in love with. For the Dark Universe’s take on this ten, Scarlett Johansson was considered to take on this role. Scoring her could’ve also associated the nascent Dark Universe with the Marvel Cinematic Universe, however tangentially. Inevitably, this modern Creature from the Black Lagoon sank to the bottom of the Dark Universe ocean. 

3. Dwayne Johnson as The Wolfman

Before Ryan Gosling and Christopher Abbott were attached to this role in the 2020s, Dwayne Johnson was a name bandied about for the Dark Universe’s inevitable Wolfman reboot. Johnson would’ve been a massive change from other past Wolfman actors simply because he’s already a massive intimidating man before you deck him out in extensive makeup and prosthetics. Still, Johnson was seen as bulletproof at the box office in the mid-2010s, and securing him could’ve aided the Dark Universe immensely. The question of how exactly turning a brawny guy into a hairy beast would’ve worked was never answered. The Dark Universe’s take on The Wolfman was never realized. 

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2. Angelina Jolie as The Bride of Frankenstein

Originally, 2017’s The Mummy would’ve been followed up 20 months later with the Dark Universe’s second installment: Bill Condon’s The Bride of Frankenstein. For this project, Condon heavily eyeballed Angelina Jolie as the ideal pick to play the titular Bride while Javier Bardem was already signed on to play Frankenstein’s Monster. Jolie taking in such an iconic role might’ve been a recipe for a better box office run than The Mummy. However, the world would never see this feature. After The Mummy became a colossal box office failure, Condon’s Bride of Frankenstein collapsed. Not even the star power of Jolie could protect this production from the Dark Universe’s demise. 

1. Tom Hardy as Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde

In The Mummy, Russell Crowe’s Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde was introduced as the leader of the organization of Prodigium. Before Crowe took on the role, Mummy producers approached Tom Hardy to take on this critical part. Given Hardy’s love for silly accents and this universe’s version of Mr. Hyde employing a very arch Cockney voice, it’s easy to see why Hardy was thought of as an obvious choice for the role. However, this Mad Max: Fury Road leading man passed on the role. A little over a year after The Mummy’s premiere, Hardy inhabited his own loose take on the Jekyll/Hyde dynamic by playing the lead role of 2018’s Venom. Needless to say, tackling Venom instead of The Mummy was a tremendously smart career move for Hardy!

2017’s The Mummy is now available to rent or purchase from digital retailers. Wolf Man is now in theaters.