Next on Paul Feig’s directing plate is monster movie Dark Army. Primarily known for comedies such as Bridesmaids, Spy and The Heat, Feig began to branch out with mystery thriller A Simple Favor, and this latest movie will see him make his horror debut.
When Universal first made the decision to reboot its stable of classic monster movies, the initial idea was for it to be an interconnected series known as the Dark Universe, beginning with The Mummy and intending to retrofit Dracula Untold into it. However, this stumbled at that first installment, the failure of which was largely down to Tom Cruise retooling the film to focus more on himself to the extent that the titular cursed Egyptian princess felt like a secondary character in her own movie, and also the film mimicking the DNA of Iron Man in an attempt to emulate the birth of the MCU, painfully crowbarring in details and information that foreshadowed later installments.
The announcement of Paul Feig directing Dark Army came from Deadline. No specifics have yet been made public about how exactly the film will tie into the world of Universal Monsters, but it is known that it will feature a mix of characters taken from the classic movies and ones original to the film.
The resurrection of classic movie monsters didn’t stop after the failure of The Mummy and the subsequent indefinite postponement of Bride of Frankenstein reboot, which at the time was already in pre-production in anticipation of the series moving forward. The approach to the films has now been altered, so rather than creating a shared universe riddled with self-reference and crossovers, the films will instead be made to recapture the spirit of the originals while updating them to the modern day, such as will be seen in Blumhouse’s take on The Invisible Man, set to be released in February next near.
Although there is currently no information about what to expect from Dark Army, the title is ambiguous enough it could apply to several facets of the Universal Monsters. It’s highly unlikely to be some kind of team up, since putting characters together without properly introducing them leads to the likes of Justice League, and some of the monsters, such as the Creature From the Black Lagoon, have remained dormant for long enough that they may be unfamiliar to younger audiences. More likely is that the army in question is some kind of creation, perhaps a scientist reverse engineering the method Dr. Frankenstein used to animate his creature and using it to raise a force of unkillable soldiers. Another possibility is that it involves creatures whose monstrous nature can be passed on, as is the case with Dracula and the Wolf Man, and is thus used to create platoons or vampires or werewolves. Whatever it is, it’s not too much to hope it will be something different from what we’ve seen before.
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Source: Deadline
