5 Cinematic Universes That Failed Miserably

Universal's idea of creating a universe of classic horror monsters and fleshing out their stories in a contemporary setting was ambitions. Somewhere between League of Gentlemen and Van Helsing, the production company planned on featuring Dr Jekyll (Russell Crowe) as the head of mysterious company Prodigium, that captures and neutralises supernatural threats.

First in the line up was The Mummy, the Tom Cruise fronted reboot of the classic film. Filled with content that would only be built upon further in the franchise and laced with cliched, mundane characters, it's unsurprising that it fell flat on its face with little dignity left in tact. What is surprising is that Universal then completely abandoned all its plans for the wider instalments, which they'd prematurely lined up contracts for before seeing how audiences would take to their first movie. Oops.

Names such as Johnny Depp as the Invisible Man and Javier Bardem as Frankenstein's Monster made the rounds two weeks before release, but have mysteriously disappeared off the roster. Universal halted production on Bride of Frankenstein (starring Angelina Jolie, no less) and directors have pulled out of each of their respective movies in the franchise. The Dark Universe is dead in the water off the back of one ill-fated Tom Cruise blunder.