Bride of Frankenstein

It’s alive… sorta. After delaying ‘Bride of Frankenstein’ and pulling the plug on their Dark Universe, the next Universal monster reboot may happening.

Tom Cruise’s ‘The Mummy’ was expected to launch Universal’s new Dark Monster-verse, but now it looks like the multi-franchise universe may be dead entirely.

From Wonder Woman to one of the most famous monsters in movie history? It might happen.

The next film in the Dark Universe of Universal Monsters has been “paused” while its creators work on its script.

Now that The Mummy is hitting theaters this weekend, it’s time for Universal to get started on the rest of their Dark Universe films. The slate currently includes creatures like the Invisible Man, the Phantom of the Opera, Dracula, the Hunchback of Notre Dame, Frankenstein‘s monster, the Creature from the Black Lagoon, and so forth, but there’s one that’s a little more intriguing than the rest — partly because, in her film, she hardly even gets to speak. The Bride of Frankenstein is currently in early development, with a script by David Koepp that, if what he says is true, gives the character an agency that she lacked in her original movie.

Universal is going dark.

Having successfully shepherded the Emma Watson-led Beauty and the Beast remake to a billion-dollar worldwide gross, Bill Condon now has the world in his palm. An Academy Award winner with blockbuster bona fides, he’s pretty much free to take whatever project he’d like. Today brings news of what his next big endeavor might be, and it looks like he’s going to make a lateral move to stick with big budget studio work. Condon chronicled the life of British filmmaker James Whale with the celebrated Of Gods and Monsters, now he’s poised to tackle Whale’s work head-on.

Universal’s monster movie reboots are gaining traction, and with The Mummy set to relaunch the franchise next year, the studio has its eye on the next set of films in the classic monster cinematic universe. One of these is Bride of Frankenstein, which doesn’t currently have a release date, but does have a script penned by Jurassic Park screenwriter David Koepp. According to him, his version of the tale is all about female liberation.

Things are getting fairly productive with Universal’s shared universe reboot of their classic monster properties. In addition to their reboot of The Mummy, the studio is also developing new films based on The Wolf Man, Van Helsing and Bride of Frankenstein. As recently rumored, Universal is after Angelina Jolie to play the titular role, and while we wait to see whether or not she’ll accept their proposal (ahem), the studio has tapped Spider-Man scribe David Koepp to work on a suitable screenplay.

Angelina Jolie’s latest directorial effort was a bit of a risk for Universal, and one that doesn’t seem to be paying off as By the Sea has made less than half a million at the box office and word-of-mouth has been…less than kind. But it looks like the studio may have been well-prepared to take that risk, as a new report suggests that they took an interesting approach to negotiating their deal to produce Jolie’s film — and they have a couple of ideas for how the actress and director can pay them back.