10 More Movies That Tried To Exploit Nostalgia And Failed

One of the biggest film franchises of all time is Universal Picture's monster movie-verse, which was built over several decades in the 1950s and '60s with numerous films, including Frankenstein, The Wolfman, Dracula, and many more. In 1999, the franchise was revitalized with Brendan Fraser's The Mummy movies, and in 2017, Universal tried another reboot in the form of a planned franchise.

The first film attempting to capitalize on the nostalgia of both the original Universal Monster Universe as well as the 1999 reboot was 2017's The Mummy, which starred Tom Cruise in the "hero" role against Sofia Boutella as the titular movie monster.

With Cruise headlining the film, the movie was on track to pull in a ton of cash, and it succeeded — mostly. The film was expensive, and by the end of production, Universal Pictures spent almost $200 million to finish the film. That amount was almost doubled, thanks to a hefty promotional campaign aimed at boosting awareness of the rebooted franchise under the so-called Dark Universe title.

The Mummy made $410 million at the worldwide box office, and while that's a lot of money, the huge production costs associated with the promotional financing meant it lost money for the studio. Not only did the film fail to meet expectations, but it's poor showing resulted in the death of the Dark Universe, which was planned to feature several projects. Universal shelved this plan and is refocusing on stand-alone projects after abandoning its heavily promoted franchise.