A recurring theme in the internet era has been fans demanding sequels to movies that failed the first time around, a situation that would have been instantly remedied had enough of them actually shown up to buy a ticket in the first place. We’re not mentioning any Solo: A Star Wars Story or Alita: Battle Angel in particular, but we never thought we’d see the day when Dracula Untold joined the conversation.
Gary Shore’s hybrid of blockbuster fantasy epic, medieval sword-swinger, supernatural horror, and origin story for a cultural icon did not fare too well with critics, as you’d expect of a project bearing screenplay written by the minds behind The Last Witch Hunter, Gods of Egypt, and Morbius.
A $217 million haul from theaters was solid without being spectacular, but it’s what happened both before and after Dracula Untold‘s release that makes it such a fascinating case. A Reddit thread found one of the film’s many supporters asking why it didn’t launch a multi-film franchise, and the multitude of answers are equally fascinating.
For one, the 25 percent Rotten Tomatoes score and 58 percent user rating has something to do with it. Second, Universal was so emboldened by its own plans for a Marvel-style mythology that reshoots tacked on months after the end of principal photography brought Luke Evans’ Vlad into the modern day via a forced and on-the-nose epilogue, setting him up to be a part of the Dark Universe.
Then, The Mummy came along and was cast out of official canon by director Alex Kurtzman, who saw his own proposed franchise-launcher go down in a ball of almost hilarious flames. Evans voiced his desire to use up those remaining options on his contract, too, which ended up being worth less than the paper it printed on.
Dracula Untold has become a regular sleeper hit on streaming, though, but why didn’t it get a sequel? Because it wasn’t very good, it didn’t make enough money, and it was tossed on the scrapheap in favor of something significantly worse that bombed even harder. Honestly, you couldn’t make this stuff up.