10 Cinematic Universes That Failed To Happen

The Dark Universe is probably in the forefront of peoples’ minds when they think of failed cinematic universes, in fact, many people might be wondering why it hasn’t been mentioned sooner. This is because this entry is dedicated to their first attempt at establishing The Dark Universe with Dracula Untold. Yes, Universal’s ill-fated first go at setting up the Universal Monsters as some type of Avengers-style team.

Unlike the previous entry, Dracula Untold was given a more reasonable budget of $100 million (still too high), and was tasked with setting out Dracula as a sympathetic character that audiences could engage with. And, well, director Gary Shore certainly tried. The film opened to a poor critical response and mediocre box office results, resulting in Universal downplaying the movies franchise links, and rethinking their approach with the classic monsters.

Of course, this approach led to The Mummy, which we’ll get to later. A silver lining to these poor franchise attempts is that Universal has seemingly started to get it right this year, with the release of the fantastic and horror focused The Invisible Man. Hopefully Universal will keep this up in the years to come.