Trivia / Dark Universe

• Development Hell: The second movie project, The Bride of Frankenstein, originally had a February 14, 2019 release date, but has since been pulled from Universal's release schedule. Whether or not it will be rebooted remains to be seen.
• Follow the Leader: Admittedly inspired by the success of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. However, it should be noted that the original Universal Horror was the first shared universe in the history of cinema.
• One-Episode Wonder: The series only had one movie. If Dracula: Untold hadn't been excised from its canon, it would've had two.
• Stillborn Franchise:
  • Dracula Untold was retooled very late into production to serve as an introduction to this franchise, only to be scrapped out of canon after mostly lukewarm reception, with The Mummy instead being the first planned film of the Dark Universe. However, it too was released to a disappointing critical and domestic box office performance. A few months later, it was announced that the next film Bride of Frankenstein was "on hold" until they were sure what to do with it, which many took as PR spin on the franchise being dead.
  • In November 2017, Kurtzman and Morgan left the project. This was seen by some as its death-knell, while others, who noted that both of them have been far more associated with big budget action movies then horror films, saw this as the dead weight being tossed before more damage could be done. In January 2019, the series was confirmed dead, with Universal moving to a new plan of director-driven standalone films.
• Writing by the Seat of Your Pants: In a 2021 podcast interview, former Van Helsing screenwriter Eric Heisserer confirmed that the people hired for the writing room generally had quite frankly no idea what they were doing. As Heisserer reports, a sizable number of the writers couldn't make up their minds as to whether all the monsters the movies centered around should be heroes or villains, at least one writer straight up suggested that they'd all 'build the plane while it was flying', and Heisserer himself as well as fellow writer John Spaihts appeared to be the only sane men in the writing room.

---