Universal and Blumhouse Productions are releasing a new iteration of The Invisible Man this weekend and producer Jason Blum is already expressing interest in reviving other monsters in the Universal catalog.
He spoke about the possibility to Bloomberg while promoting the film, saying:
“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.”
Universal tried this revival just three years ago with the release of The Mummy starring Tom Cruise. But the movie failed to connect with both critics and audiences. For a film only three years old, it’s as if it never happened. That’s how forgettable and terrible it is.
The Mummy was supposed to jumpstart a new “Dark Universe” for the studio as well, with multiple movies interconnecting. Sort of like Universal’s version of the MCU. You can even see the Dark Universe logo when you watch The Mummy. But seriously, don’t watch it. It’s not worth it.
The studio recently admitted to the failure of that ambitious endeavor and are instead focusing on individual efforts with up-and-coming directors now. And based on the response to The Invisible Man, they’re off to a great start. Our very own Matt Donato gave it a favorable review and it currently sits at 92% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
Blum’s happy with it because it’s in line with a typical Blumhouse production as well, saying:
“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.”
Rather than focusing on a bigger universe, Blumhouse is interested in individual stories created by talented young filmmakers. In the case of The Invisible Man, it was director Leigh Whannell who came up with a great story, as Blum says:
“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 said that he’s also had discussions about other Universal Monsters, but they’re still in the early stages of development right now.
“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 cost just $9 million to make, so turning a profit won’t take much. Based on the buzz it’s getting so far, it should, at the very least, become a modest success for Universal and will hopefully open up the possibility for more monster movies down the road.