After Disney and Warner Bros. made bank with their various cinematic crossovers, Universal is getting it on the action with its own.
Dark Universe will kick off with the Tom Cruise summer tent pole next month, with word that several of the characters will at least make it to the next entry in the rebooting franchise.
In a press release, Universal outlined its next project, with Bride of Frankenstein aiming to be the biggest date night movie on February 14th, 2019. Bill Condon, whose live-action Beauty & the Beast, brought in $1.2bn for Disney, will helm the creature feature, with casting currently underway.
Bride of Frankenstein replaces whatever Universal was planning to release on April 13th next year, which has been quietly removed from the slate. To iron over the bumps in their press release, Universal also debuted a teaser showcasing some of the classic horror titles they’re hoping to reboot, along with a musical theme created by Danny Elfman that will appear across the entire Dark Universe franchise.
The announcement included confirmation that Johnny Depp and Javier Bardem – about to share the screen in Pirates of the Caribbean: Salazar’s Revenge – will be joining the cast as the Invisible Man and Frankenstein’s Monster respectively.
Depp and Bardem join Tom Cruise, Russell Crowe, and Sofia Boutella as the name stars in the expanded monster universe.
Oscar-winner Crowe appears to play a particularly important role, tying all of the films together as Dr Jekyll, the head of a secret supernatural investigation group called the Prodigium.
“Led by the enigmatic and brilliant Dr Henry Jekyll, Prodigium’s mission is to track, study and – when necessary – destroy evil embodied in the form of monsters in our world,” the Universal statement reads.
“Working outside the aegis of any government, and with practices concealed by millennia of secrecy, Prodigium protects the public from knowledge of the evil that exists just beyond the thin membrane of civilised society... and will go to any length to contain it.”
