The Mummy/Dark Universe - What Happened?

[Music] [Applause] [Music] alrighty so it's time to talk about the dark universe and for those of you out there that don't even know what that is which i estimate is 95 of you the dark universe was to be a connected series of movies that pulled from universal's menagerie of monsters dracula the wolf and or invisible man and most famously the mummy no not not that mummy of all our younger halcyon days but this one yeah and while this 2017 tom cruise helmed summer tentpole that held up precisely zero tents is obviously going to be our main subject for the day it is just one of the aspects of this story because mystifyingly the dark universe was simultaneously one of the biggest but also smallest failures in recent hollywood history as not a whole lot of money was actually spent on this massive tapestry of interconnected monster mashing but the sheer public humiliation of its collapse might have been worse nah it probably actually wasn't worse anyway grab your parachute and start screaming into the silence because because it's time to delve deep into what happened with the dark universe if i told you we were putting the team together who's we hey do you remember this moment the one that kicked off the most successful ongoing movie saga of all time yeah every studio in hollywood remembers it but none more vividly or bitterly than universal pitchers the reasons for this are twofold one they were actually on the ground floor of the mcu financing the hulk films and two they were technically the first studio who had attempted a grander cinematic universe some 70 years prior once they hit it big with dracula in 1931 they then produced frankenstein the wolfman and then just started smashing action figures together in various crossover films when the fascination with these gothic ghoulies started to weigh in a decade later so did the concept of mixing and matching each property fast forwarding quite a bit to the mid-2000s marvel had signed on with universal for them to produce hulk and hulk related projects until the concept of the mcu started to kick off but were eventually cut out of the deal altogether when the house of mouse did what they do best which is buying so while they went on to hitherto unheard of success universal would need to make do with what they had left which outside of making progressively worse jurassic park films and the wild speed franchise wasn't all that much so to bolster their stable of franchises they looked to the past to see what they already owned and could shoehorn into another universe and lo and behold they remembered they owned a bunch of weirdo monsters now just to specify they obviously did not own the concept of vampires mummies or werewolves just certain names and characters but since the studio had always been closely associated with said creatures well that was good enough now universal had already tried resurrecting a number of these characters with various reboots like for the wolfman or dracula which if you've seen won't be surprised to know they fell far short of big comebacks in fact 2010's wolfman for a time was going to be the start of this shared universe but at the last minute universal wanted to wait it out to see how marvel's gamble would pay off so dracula untold was then set to be the official jumping off point but those plans were kibosh when the critical reception to that film came back as a bit tepid or taped i'm sorry so with those two failures behind them and both of them being set in the past universal decided to adopt a more modern contemporary style and just to rip off marvel's approach wholesale the then logical course of action was to lean on the name of their most successful series of monster flicks the academy award winning mummy trilogy starring everyone's favorite himbo rick o'connell oh i hate mummies but this new reboot of the reboot needed to be more sophisticated more cutting edge darker and sexier but that begs the question how can you be sexier than this well you can't so they just hired tom cruise and russell crowe instead cruz was cast as a protagonist named i i don't know what what tom cruise he was cast as tom cruise while russell crowe stepped into the tailored suit of jekyll aka mr hyde he was also to be the head of prodigium a very surprised surprise shield monarch type of organization whose job it was to protect the world against the supernatural horrors that plague it the one of most immediate concern was ahmanet a female mummy played by sophia butela the person put at the head of all this was alex kurtzman who both produced directed and helped draft up the general story not familiar with kurtzman well let me refresh your memory now regardless of the creatives directly involved the problem was that this reboot didn't exactly endear itself with fans of the classic universal monster lineup or even the fans of the o'connell trilogy right off the bat it looked really similar to many other tom cruise action films which when you try to shove in supernatural elements just feels really off i mean sure the dude played a vampire once kinda but by and large his films have been grounded in reality well most of them it was also unclear to mainstream moviegoers exactly what this new movie was a a remake a reboot a brand new thing if anything it hearkened back to previous failed attempts to modernize these characters like dracula 2000 anyone god i can't believe i just remembered that but this is where things get interesting kinda mere weeks before the mummy 2017 shambled into theaters universal opened the trojan horse posting a mysterious photo on social media revealing a lineup of notable actors including cruz crow butella but also javier bardem and johnny depp with the hashtag dark universe displayed very prominently yeah that's that's the photo they totally look like they're all there and not clumsily photoshopped in don't they anyway this was their big coming out party for a glut of projects that they had stewing with the prodigium factoring into most if not all of them javier bardem was set to appear as victor frankenstein's monster while johnny depp would be seen or not as the invisible man alex kurtzman was heading up a writer's room whose task it was to explore just how dark this universe can get now while many of you might be familiar with this photo it only alluded to two other films whereas there were still many many many more being tossed around these included but were not limited to renfield dark army the invisible woman monster mash van helsing no no another van helsing creature from the black lagoon the wolf man starring rock the dwayne johnson the hunchback of notre dame the phantom of the opera invisible man 2. you didn't make invisible map another dracula which luke evans apparently campaigned to return to the role and finally a remake of the scorpion king and no i'm not kidding [Music] why now unlike marvel which launched the productions of hulk iron man thorn captain america simultaneously universal had done very little work on these future films and at least had the foresight to wait for the mummy's box office receipts before they fully committed they still however obviously couldn't resist showing their hand a bit too early with that cast photo no doubt this was a move used to drum up more hype that hype of course was softened somewhat by the infamous trailer that was uploaded to youtube with an incomplete sound mix while i can't say this actively hurt the film's chances i can't imagine it helped much what also didn't help was the finished film a dull generic action thriller with a few supernatural elements kinda mixed in while it's not some outright battlefield earth style disaster oh god no it also wasn't terribly exciting or memorable this then of course translated into poor reviews which then of course translated into poorer domestic box office results universal also shot themselves in the foot by unleashing the mummy just one week after the original wonder woman which wound up grossing close to a billion dollars worldwide over a long tail so diana definitely lassoed some profits away from mr cruz speaking of money on a budget of 125 million that's before marketing costs the mummy was only able to unearth 80 million in north america which is not very good but here's the thing in the last decade movies became a more global business and worldwide it actually wrapped up 407 million dollars total far from a failure unfortunately hollywood still tends to place a lot of importance on domestic halls and with that being so embarrassingly low they decided to just cut the cord anyway and in my estimation they weren't exactly wrong to do it putting the hopes and or dreams of an entire cinematic universe on its wobbly shoulders was ill-advised with its reviews being so lukewarm and its north american commercial performance being quite the pittance universal figured they'd only see diminishing returns from then on out if they push forward with the rest in the universe especially since in terms of theatrical familiarity the mummy had the most brand recognition [Music] so those are the cold hard facts but we're not done because shortly after the film's debut variety reported on claims that tom cruise had been given a massive amount of control during filming often asking for rewrites criticizing alex kurtzman on his directing and generally shaping the film to his liking i'm not interested in that at all this was in contrast with the first drafts of the script which allegedly focused more on the supernatural elements but this has never been confirmed universal were quick to deny these allegations in a kind of nothing statement released that same week tom approaches every project with a level of commitment and dedication that is unmatched by most working in our business today he has been a true partner and creative collaborator and his goal with any project he works on is to provide audiences with a truly cinematic movie going experience now it should be noted that cruz's other films from around that time like edge of tomorrow or jack reacher did not have these same allegations lobbied against them so we'll need to file this under the he said she said rule for now now despite all that the finnish film just didn't inspire enough confidence to expand the scope of the universe and just a few months later that very november alex kurtzman stepped down from his role in the writer's room and washed his hands of the whole thing while his public statement was pretty vague you can definitely tell that some type of interference hampered the film's production the mummy wasn't what i wanted it to be i'm no longer involved in that and have no idea what's going on with it i look back on it now and what felt painful at the time ended up being an incredible blessing for me i learned that i need to follow my own instincts and when i can't fully do that i don't think i can succeed those films are beautiful because the monsters are broken characters and we see ourselves in them i hope those are the movies that they make i want to see them now in the few months between the movie's debut and kurtzman stepping down there had been some movement on getting some of the other projects off the ground with angelina jolie having been approached to play the bride of frankenstein but when kurtzman stepped down the whole thing went down with him since then he has yet to return to motion pictures and has instead focused on producing the recent glut of star trek tv projects which also have seen divisive reactions looking at things today the official dark universe twitter has only two posts which are now both four years old so it's pretty clear that the idea of an interconnected series of films is dead but that doesn't mean universal has given up entirely 2020s the invisible man proved to be far more successful as a standalone project ditching johnny depp going with smaller actors in scope and putting a more stalkerish spin on the source material it wound up making 172 million on a mere budget of seven proving that spending a massive amount of money is not a sure-fire way to a film's success you just need to let the director be creative and also there's the mummy d mastered a pretty solid game by way forward so it's not a total loss perhaps though the greatest tragedy of all of this is that the dark universe could have been very different and while i can't say for sure it would have been better actually i can back in 2007 universal had offered guillermo del toro a chance to remake frankenstein one of his favorite all-time stories was going to give him carte blanche to do it his way abe sapien himself doug jones was even in talks to don the neck bolts however negotiations went poorly and del toro eventually walked away while the exact reasoning isn't known lots of theories suggest that if successful universal then wanted del toro to oversee or produce every other film that would follow even if they didn't involve frankenstein or his monster he would become their own kevin feige del toro most likely didn't want to be tied down to just one studio or not be able to pursue outside projects so he declined the offer but again none of this has been confirmed what del toro did offer when it was revealed that the dark universe had kind of sputtered and broke down was regret i've said no to things that are enormous and i've never looked back the only time i repent i didn't do something was in 2007 when universal in an incredibly gentle and beautiful manner said do you want to take over the monster universe and they gave me the reigns of several properties and i didn't do it that i repent so this is a confessional moment i repent that's the only thing wow that's super depressing um when you step back and look at everything that went wrong with this whole project plan universe whatever you want to call it well it really starts to feel like it was jinxed or hexed or maybe even cursed what is it with you and curses yeah i'm happy without a good curse this is curse that is crushed give it a rest will ya if you know of any other dusty devastated developments in the video game or movie industry let me know in the comments below over on my twitter or shamble on over to the flaphouse vip patreon and become a big boss and nominate what i'll be taking on in the future also massive shout outs to morales for suggesting the dark universe see you next time and thanks for watching [Music]

Channel: Matt McMuscles

Views: 372,005

Keywords: The Mummy (2017), The Dark Universe, What Happened?, Matt McMuscles, Wha Happun, Movie Documentaries, Failed Movies, Tom Cruise, The Mummy

Id: phzG-FCgJj8

Length: 17min 27sec (1047 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 03 2021