When the reboot of Godzilla came to our screens back in 2014, Legendary’s MonsterVerse was born. In 2017, they released Kong: Skull Island which quickly became a box office hit as it made $500 million worldwide. With the success of these reboots, it was announced at the 2018 July Comic Con that there would be more Godzilla sequels, with Godzilla: King of the Monsters, coming in 2019, and Godzilla vs Kong coming in 2019. Both Godzilla and King Kong had their day way back and were left as classics. However, the MonsterVerse has changed that and turned them into a freshly re-invented beloved franchise, which leads us to question what else could make a comeback. Universal’s Dark Universe was once anticipated to be a hit, but The Mummy turned out to be a huge disappointment and thus the Dark Universe was already dead in the water. Or was it? Here, we’ll look at how the Dark Universe could see revival just like the MonsterVerse did for Kong and Godzilla.
The Mummy was a massive flop that lost Universal $95 million at the box office. They had set out to make a franchise of classic dark monsters with a star studded cast, but The Mummy ended up being a movie that not even Tom Cruise could save, so what went wrong? When the first instalment of The Mummy series came out, it was a huge hit. Many people believe that this remake set itself up for future sequels too much without first establishing itself as a good standalone film. As a result, the film was poorly received, only ranking 15% on Rotten Tomatoes. Another reason for failure is that Universal timed the release of The Mummy very poorly. It coincided with the release of Wonder Woman, a movie which became incredibly popular and was a massive box office success. Overall, it was a movie which was poorly written and too cocky for its own good. Combine that with a terrible release date and you’ve got a film that’s dead on arrival and killed the hopes for a franchise too. But is there a chance to save it? 
Now that we know what went wrong, how can Universal save their Dark Universe franchise? The idea of bringing back classic gothic monsters is a good one which has a lot of promise, and Dracula was set to be the next in the series. Dracula is one of the classics which everyone is familiar with. The legend of Dracula and vampires has seen many spin-offs and reiterations over the years. The Twilight series saw huge success as well as TV shows like Vampire Diaries and True Blood, none of which would exist if Dracula hadn’t been so popular. The sheer amount of video games spawned as a result of the vampire legend shows how popular the legend still is. This includes games such as such as Vampyr and Bloodrayne as well as online slots like Vampire Princess of Darkness which can be played as part of a free spins no deposit offer from Betfair Casino. With the right writing and a well-timed release date, the Dracula film could become a total smash.
The Dark Universe may appear to be a non-starter, but there is potential for it to make a comeback. Hopefully, Universal have learned from their mistakes and will know not to put all of their hopes into one single movie. With the right pacing, better writing and a well-planned release, Dracula could very well be the movie to get the Dark Universe off its knees.
