Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman are the it men of the moment. Having written numerous blockbusters over the last few years including Transformers, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, Star Trek, Star Trek Into Darkness, Cowboys & Aliens and The Amazing Spider-Man 2, they’re ready to continue their domination of the big budget Hollywood blockbuster. With the duo currently writing and producing the reboots of Van Helsing and The Mummy, they have hinted towards a shared universe of the classic movie monsters.
Orci and Kurtzman said, “There’s an interesting thing that could happen at Universal where they have this amazing library of their old monsters and these kinds of heroes, and the idea of trying to create a universe. [We’re doing] Van Helsing, and we’re also producing the Mummy for them. We’re kind of imagining updating these kinds of things. You don’t want to just make remakes when you’re doing a thing, unless it’s worthy of being a remake, but when you have an idea for something that can actually be made different and yet be true to what it was. We just had a notion of how to make it modern and have a slightly different tone. It’s not going to be just a remake.”
Reboots of the classic Universal movie monsters have failed with fans and critics in recent years, with Van Helsing, The Wolfman and The Mummy sequels getting an almost universal panning. Hopefully this new round of reboots will change that trend.
Originally published October 20, 2013. Updated April 11, 2018.
