Coming off a monster year at the box office, Universal Studios is hard at work developing their own monsters. Specifically, a huge universe based on Universal Monsters, which will start with The Mummy and expand from there.
Now, in a new story at The Hollywood Reporter, they talk about the studio’s dream casting for the Bride of Frankenstein. They want Angelina Jolie to play the role, which would be pretty amazing. They’d also love her to come back for a role in Wanted 2, a movie many fans have been hoping for.
How bad does Universal want this to happen? That’s the best part. The article says they financed Jolie’s current box office bomb By the Sea in the hopes it would buy good will with the actress. The thought is, even if that movie loses a ton of money, they’ll make that back and more if Jolie does even one of these other tentpole pictures. (They also made last year’s Jolie film Unbroken, which was a moderate hit.)
Only time will tell if the plan worked. All we currently know about the new Universal Monsters franchise is Alex Kurtzman (Star Trek, Transformers) and Chris Morgan (Fast and the Furious franchise) are working on the big picture shape of it, with Kurtzman helming The Mummy for a March 24, 2017 release. From there, several other monster movies will come out leading to an Avengers-type team up movie. Or at least that’s the plan.
Casting on The Mummy should start soon and, hopefully after that, we’ll find out which monster is next. Either way, if Jolie comes on board as The Bride of Frankenstein, that would automatically legitimize the universe in a way few other things could do.
[The Hollywood Reporter, H/T /Film]
Image credit: Kevin Tong for Mondo, By the Sea/Universal Pictures
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