After abandoning its ambitions to launch a shared ‘Dark Universe’ with the Tom Cruise-headlined reboot of The Mummy, Universal Pictures has switched up its strategy for the classic Universal Monsters properties, moving away from plans for an interconnected universe and handing the keys to The Invisible Man to Blumhouse Productions and writer-director Leigh Whannell (Upgrade).
During an interview with Collider, Blumhouse’s Jason Blum has been discussing how the Invisible Man deal came about, and teasing their approach to the classic H.G. Wells tale:
“I don’t believe in saying ‘We’re going to do movies about this’ and then trying to find a movie about it,” states Blum. “So, I didn’t believe in going and saying ‘I want to do all these movies’ and then try to find directors to do them. We have a director we’ve also done six or seven movies with, pitched us this spectacular idea about Invisible Man. We told him to write it, he wrote it, then we took it to the studio and said ‘We’d love to do this and this is what we would do with it’ and they said yes.”
“It was like the Blumhouse version of The Invisible Man, it’s a lower-budget movie,” he continues. “It’s not dependent on special effects, CGI, stunts. It’s super character-driven, it’s really compelling, it’s thrilling, it’s edgy, it feels new. Those were all things that felt like they fit with what our company does. And it happened to be an Invisible Man story, so it checked both boxes. And we responded to it because I think Leigh is just an A+ director.”
Johnny Depp was previously attached to portray the title character in The Invisible Man when it was set up as a Dark Universe entry, but will not be involved in Whannell’s version.
SEE ALSO: The Mummy director says the Dark Universe movie wasn’t what he wanted it to be
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