The idea of creating shared universe for multiple characters and storylines isn't exactly a new concept - we've seen it an endless number of times on television (See: The Tommy Westphall Universe Hypothesis) and filmmakers like Quentin Tarantino, Robert Rodriguez and Kevin Smith have spent their careers creating small links between unrelated projects. By making the Marvel Cinematic Universe into one of the biggest film franchises in the world, however, Marvel Studios has made the "shared universe" idea more popular than ever. 20th Century Fox is working to bring together the Fantastic Four and the X-Men, Warner Bros. is finally getting around to pairing Batman and Superman in one movie, and now, outside of the superhero world, it's been revealed that Universal may have similar plans for the reboots of their classic monster movies.
At least that's the story being suggested by Roberto Orci, who, along with his screenwriting partner Alex Kurtzman, is currently attached to write the scripts for both the new versions of The Mummy and Van Helsing. Orci recently sat down with IGN for a video interview promoting the upcoming adaptation of Ender's Game, and during the discussion the writer revealed that there may be a chance that the remakes that Universal has in the works will all be part of a multi-franchise spanning collection. Said the writer,
"There’s an interesting thing that could happen at Universal where they have this amazing library of their old monsters and these kinds of heroes, and the idea of trying to create a universe. [We're doing] Van Helsing, and we’re also producing The Mummy for them. We’re kind of imagining updating these kinds of things. You don’t want to just make remakes when you’re doing a thing, unless it’s worthy of being a remake, but when you have an idea for something that can actually be made different and yet be true to what it was. We just had a notion of how to make it modern and have a slightly different tone. It’s not going to be just a remake."
Of course, The Mummy and Van Helsing (who originates from the story of Dracula) are only two potential movies that could come out of Universal's library of monsters. The studio's other classics include Frankenstein, The Phantom of the Opera, The Invisible Man, The Creature From The Black Lagoon, The Hunchback of Notre Dame and The Wolf Man. We've heard random tidbits about possible remakes and reboots of those movies as well - and let's not forget the trainwreck that 2010's The Wolfman became - but right now The Mummy and Van Helsing appear to be Universal's priority. Let's hope the latter can be better than this abomination:
