From the 1920s up until the emergence of England’s Hammer Productions in the late 1950s, Universal was the undisputed champion of the monster/horror movie, particularly with its monster movies of the 1930s and 1940s. But aside from The Mummy trilogy, Universal hasn’t had much luck in its attempts to revive the Universal Monsters brand: 2004 Van Helsing did lower-than-expected business, and 2010’s The Wolfman was a box office failure (although it won an Oscar, surprisingly!)
Still, if we’ve learned anything from the box office the last few years vampires and werewolves are still popular, so it’s no surprise that Universal is giving the monster thing another shot… actually, Universal is giving it two shots. After signing an exclusive deal with writers Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci (Star Trek, Cowboys & Aliens), Universal has assigned the duo to pen scripts for reboots of The Mummy and Van Helsing, with Tom Cruise attached to star in the latter.
Why Universal is planning on rebooting two movies that are less than ten years old (the last Mummy sequel came out in 2008) is beyond me. Kurtzman & Orci certainly have had a lot of success, but they also wrote Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, so, yeah… bit of a gamble.
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