BLUMHOUSE
Hot on the heels of The Invisible Man, JASON BLUM wants to let all the Universal creatures loose
Now he’s made The Invisible Man a must-see, Jason Blum has plans for the other Universal creatures: Dracula, The Wolfman, and Stifler.
WITH THE MUMMY’S lukewarm reception in 2017, Universal’s Dark Universe, a new era of interlinked films resurrecting the studio’s classic monsters, crashed and burned. But then Leigh Whannell and Blumhouse rode into town, unleashing a fresh take on The Invisible Man perfectly suited to 2020. Lean, mean and cost-effective, this $7 million, relatively lo-fi exercise in terror was a one-off — but its success may well see those old monsters out for blood again.
“It was always something that I’d wanted to do,” says producer Jason Blum, of getting to play in the Universal Monsters toybox. “I loved monsters as a kid. I was Frankenstein for Hallowe’en when I was eight years old.” Talking to Empire on the phone from his home, working remotely during the Covid-19 pandemic, he says that when the Dark Universe was launched he paid it little mind, mostly because the scale of the films (The Mummy cost a reported $125 million) was in a different realm to Blumhouse’s tried and tested model. “We don’t do movies over $20 million,” he explains. “It would have been like competing with Marvel.”
After The Mummy failed to inspire audiences, though, Universal approached Blum and Whannell, whose spare set-up made for an enormously effective experience. And now Blum hopes for more, starting with Dracula and Frankenstein. As with The Invisible Man, they would be one-offs, but of a piece. “If we’re lucky enough to do them, I think they’ll feel like The Invisible Man feels — very grounded, character- and performance-driven, and not super-heavy on special effects,” he says.
He had already been developing a Dracula film with director Karyn Kusama, and while it remains in pre-production for now, Blum is optimistic. As evidenced by The Invitation and Destroyer, Kusama is an expert at atmosphere. How, though, do you make a film about an immortal vampire feel as grounded as Whannell’s The Invisible Man, which boasts scary shots of doorways? “No idea,” laughs Blum. “I have the easy part of saying, ‘Make Dracula like The Invisible Man.’ How that’s gonna happen, I have no idea. But Karyn has an idea.”
For Frankenstein, he has asked a couple of other in-house directors to pitch takes, asking, “If you watch The Invisible Man, does that inspire any thinking about what Frankenstein could be?” And could The Wolfman and The Mummy be next? “They definitely appeal to me, because there are so many places that you could take those stories,” he says. And if he can pull off what they achieved with The Invisible Man, we’re in for a treat. It may not be a universe as such, but it’s gonna get dark.
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