Remember Universal’s Dark Universe? Looking back on it, it was laugh-out-loud funny. As every single studio desperately scrabbled to find a cinematic universe in the wake of Marvel’s success, they all went a bit crazy. Warner Bros. didn’t even wait for the dust to settle on Man Of Steel before they blundered into their poorly planned, terribly executed DCEU that failed before it started. Unbelievably, Universal f*cked up even worse.
Before a single movie was finished and released, they had already recruited some of the biggest actors on the planet and then announced them, to much fanfare, as a new cinematic universe based around their stable of famous monsters. Dracula Untold was hastily retconned, simply by comment, into being a jumping-off point.
Then they unveiled Tom Cruise, pre-Amber Heard Johnny Depp, pre-all the pies Russell Crowe, and Oscar winner (TM) Javier Bardem as the stars behind this. It was going to be massive! Only it wasn’t…
The Mummy, led by Tom Cruise, opened to barely a ripple at the box office. The entire thing was quickly shelved. Contracts must have been paid out. The whole thing died a quick death. Instead, Universal went for unconnected modern reinterpretations of their classics, such as The Invisible Man and the upcoming The Wolfman.
Until now. Like the un-dead, it has risen! Universal is reviving the concept for its brand new theme park in Florida – Universal’s Epic Universe.
This is the soon-to-open third park in Orlando. Across the highway, so not boxed in like Islands Of Adventure and Universal Studios, this is a new park that has been built from the ground up and will be open in 2025. It will also allow them time to grow, as there is considerably more space around this park than their existing gates.
The park will include, according to the blurb, “five epic worlds” and over 50 “unique and compelling experiences” spread across Celestial Park, The Wizarding World of Harry Potter: The Ministry Of Magic, Super Nintendo World, How to Train Your Dragon – Isle of Berk, and… the Dark Universe.
This Dark Universe will apparently pull together the worlds of the classic Universal monsters where they will be “reimagined” into an “ominous and chilling experience”. Then there is this:
“From the experiments of Dr. Victoria Frankenstein to a shadowy landscape where monsters roam, Dark Universe is a world of myth and mystery.”
Because of course, there is.
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