Dark Army could be Paul Feig’s next film, is meant to start a franchise

Last Updated on August 2, 2021

A year and a half ago, Universal Pictures hired Bridesmaids / Ghostbusters 2016 director Paul Feig to write, direct, and produce (with Laura Fischer) a monster movie called Dark Army that would "include characters from Universal's classic monster library and original characters created by Feig." Earlier this year, Feig said he thought Universal felt the project would be "a little to expensive", but he was still determined to make it. Now he has confirmed to the folks over at Collider that he's going to do a fresh draft of the script to try to avoid potential budgetary issues and hopefully get the project into production.

He also revealed that he's hoping Dark Army will be the start of his own monster movie franchise.

During an appearance on the Collider Podcast, Feig said, 

There is [positive momentum on Dark Army]. I’m desperate to do it. Universal had a moment of pause because I think it seemed a little too expensive at the scope that I did it at, so I’m going to go in and do a rewrite to kind of bring it down. I mean the scope will still be big, but I actually think they were right, I think I was trying to bite off more than I probably should for what I would hope would be the first installment in something I want to carry on, so I’m rewriting that right now and fingers crossed that could be the next thing I could do. That’s the genre that I’ve been wanting to do forever, just a classic monster movie. Not a horror movie, but a classic monster movie in the tradition of the James Whale and Tod Browning movies. So yeah, hopefully that will be up next."

Feig has never said which of the classic Universal monsters he's planning to include in his film, but he said that his script has "one of my favorite lead characters I've ever come up with". We'll have to wait and see if his rewrite will convince Universal to put Dark Army on the fast track.
 

Source: Collider

About the Author

Cody is a news editor and film critic, focused on the horror arm of JoBlo.com, and writes scripts for videos that are released through the JoBlo Originals and JoBlo Horror Originals YouTube channels. In his spare time, he's a globe-trotting digital nomad, runs a personal blog called Life Between Frames, and writes novels and screenplays.