Universal Monsters Shared Universe Will Have a New Dracula

Alex Kurtzman also confirms original classics are part of this continuity.

By Jim Vejvoda

Director Alex Kurtzman confirmed to IGN and other press at a trailer launch last week for The Mummy that 2014's Dracula Untold is not part of Universal's planned shared universe based on their classic monsters. The shared universe, which Kurtzman is overseeing, will introduce a new Dracula instead. This confirmation jibes with what Dracula Untold director Gary Shore suspected when we spoke to him in 2014.

"The monster universe thing evolved later on," Shore told us at the time. "So the film doesn’t really adhere to those rules. It isn’t really tied into that. I don’t want to give away what happens in the film. It’s optional for them if they want to use it as that launching pad."

Alex Kurtzman, who is directing 2017's The Mummy, also confirmed that famous monster hunter Abraham Van Helsing is not in The Mummy as his character is getting his own reboot: "We're very actively working on Van Helsing right now. Jon Spaihts, who actually wrote the first draft of this [The Mummy], has actually been working on Van Helsing with Eric Heisserer and one of the beautiful things about this movie is that there are a lot of peripheral characters that are really interesting. And maybe they get their own movie down the line, or maybe they just appear in other movies for the right reasons. No more surprises in term of character introduction."

When asked if he sees The Mummy as the launch of a new continuity or a continuation of existing lore, Kurtzman called it "the launch. I think the continuity that we'd be adhering to would be the classic monsters. The goal, the mission statement, is to take those classic movies and bring them into a modern day."

However, when then press on whether there's a sense of, say, the original Boris Karloff Mummy movie having happened in this continuity, Kurtzman said, "I wouldn't rule that out as a possibility. It's not currently informing our thinking. I think the approach to that movie is informing our thinking in our approach to this movie. You know what? I will say that absolutely, those movies exist in a continuity."

One thing the Universal Monsters shared universe won't acknowledge are the various monsters' respective literary origins. Kurtzman said that their Dracula, for example, won't "be referencing himself either in a movie or a book. Actually, I faced the same problem when we wrote Sleepy Hallow the television show. Is there a Sleepy Hallow short story? Does Ichabod Crane, is he the guy from the short story? Ultimately, it becomes so self conscious if you're sort of referencing the material in that same way that it's best to just say this is its own reality."

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