Since 2014’s immediately-forgotten Dracula Untold, Universal’s plan for a so-called “Dark Universe” has devolved into a disconnected, directionless, wildly staggered non-trilogy. It took over half a decade to churn out The Mummy and The Invisible Man, and they’re still no closer to realizing their Halloween-themed spin on the MCU. Yet, as hopelessly spent as they are, you have to hand it to them: these jerks just won’t give up on whatever it is they’re trying to do at this point.
With a new Dracula movie, a “Monster Mash” movie, Paul Feig’s Dark Army, Elizabeth Banks’s Invisible Woman, a Dracula henchman movie, and a few other dubious projects pulling their spooky cobweb in different directions, now the studio has signed Ryan Gosling to star in Wolfman.
Orange Is the New Black writers Lauren Schuker Blum (of Invisible Man production company Blumhouse, naturally) and Rebecca Angelo wrote the script, which will reportedly see Gosling as a modern-day news anchor who contracts lycanthropy. It’s said the script “evokes Network and Nightcrawler“—which, if they can pull it off, sounds like a pretty cool spin on the well-worn werewolf story. It also finally makes the case to go back to the old plan of interconnecting these things, with Russell Crowe as Dr. Jeckyll. The Nice Guys (Who Periodically Turn into Mean Monsters) is clearly the only Dark Universe worth visiting.
