As someone who's loved the Universal Monster films for the majority of my life, I'm still a little apprehensive about Universal's plan to unite their famous Monster's in a series of shared-universe movies. It's entirely possible to make these characters work in a modern-day environment without sacrificing what makes them special, but will Universal be able to pull it off? I suppose we'll know before too long as there are many Universal Monster movies on the way, including VAN HELSING, a film centering around the famed vampire hunter.
Jon Spaihts (DOCTOR STRANGE) and Eric Heisserer (ARRIVAL) had previously penned the script for VAN HELSING, but now The Tracking Board is reporting that Dan Mazeau (WRATH OF THE TITANS) has signed on to take over scripting duties. Mazeau was a part of the writers room for the Universal Monsters franchise and, according to TTB, he's actually been working on the script since last September, it just hasn't been reported until now. It's not certain how much will change from the Jon Spaihts & Eric Heisserer script, but the latter recently spoke with Collider and teased that it was his intention to make the film as scary as possible.
I don’t know what it’s going to look like at the end of the process, so I’m gonna withhold on commenting on really where it lands. I can say that my intent stepping in was to make it as scary as possible, partly because I know how to do that, and also because when you’re the only human surrounded by a bunch of supernatural creatures, that’s gotta be absolutely unnerving.
THE MUMMY, the first film in the Universal Monsters franchise, is set to hit theaters on June 9, 2017.
