10 Movies That Led To Other Movies Being Cancelled (And Why)

The decision to reinvent Universal's stable of classic monsters as the stars of action-driven blockbusters always seemed like a strange creative choice, and one that ultimately backfired spectacularly on the studio. They had already attempted to lay the foundations for a shared universe once before with Dracula Untold, but the second go-round was a much more high-profile disaster.

The Mummy may have earned over $400m at the box office, but it was savaged by critics, and the studio's over-confidence in giving the Dark Universe a signature title card, positioning Russell Crowe's Henry Jekyll as the franchise's Nick Fury-esque figure and using reams of exposition to try and hint at a larger world drew plenty of scorn.

Not long after The Mummy hit theaters, the Dark Universe slowly began to unravel. Bill Condon's The Bride of Frankenstein, which was set to star Angeline Jolie in the title role, was scrapped while in the midst of pre-production, and eventually the entire experiment was abandoned entirely. Johnny Depp's Invisible Man and Javier Bardem's Frankenstein were never mentioned again, with the infamous photo of the franchise's proposed stars now the Dark Universe's entire legacy.