If DRACULA UNTOLD isn’t forgotten, then it’s kind of notorious. From what I remembered it was the start of the Dark Universe, the planned shared universe of action-oriented Universal Monster reboots. The public scoffed at that whole idea, then everybody (besides me) hated THE MUMMY and the whole thing got scrapped and became a punchline.
But it wasn’t originally intended to be part of that anyway. The script had been around for a while. I remember reading about it years earlier when it was gonna be an Alex Proyas movie called DRACULA: YEAR ZERO. Sam Worthington was to star. It wasn’t about starting anything, it was about prequelizing Dracula as a thrilling 21st century fantasy adventure character – to give the iconic cape-wearer a heroic backstory, or at least good intentions and motives. Basically it asks what if before he was the Count we all know, he was what I call a Fantasy Sword Dude: the pretty cool, unevenly charismatic hero of a digital era studio b-movie. (read the rest of this shit…)
There are some things too powerful, too uncontrollable, too dangerous to play around with. Ancient, vanquished forces brought back to life in a world they were never meant for, doomed to fulfill prophecies of disaster. In this case, I’m talking about the 85-year-old Universal Monsters franchise properties, resurrected once more using the fearsome occult invocation “SHARED UNIVERSE REBOOT.”
