Earlier this year Universal Studios announced it was creating a shared cinematic universe a-la-Marvel featuring its classic movie monsters like The Mummy, The Wolfman, Dracula, Frankenstein, and The Invisible Man (see “Universal Building Series of Monster Movies”).  Now it has become apparent that the “Writer’s Room” that the studio has set up under the direction of Alex Kurtzman (Star Trek) and Chris Morgan (Fast and Furious—see “Universal Assembles Writers’ Room for Monster Movies”) is taking the Universal monsters out of the horror genre and rebooting the characters in a more Marvel-like action/adventure mode.
 
At an industry roundtable sponsored by The Hollywood Reporter, Universal’s Chief Donna Langely let the Black Cat out of the bag as she described the transformation of her studio’s approach to its classic horror properties.  Note Langley’s pointed reference to a “lack of capes in the studio’s library,” which demonstrates once again how much the success of Marvel Studios has transformed Tinseltown.  As Langley put it: “We have to mine our resources. We don't have any capes [in our film library]. But what we do have is an incredible legacy and history with the monster characters. We've tried over the years to make monster movies — unsuccessfully, actually. So, we took a good, hard look at it, and we settled upon an idea, which is to take it out of the horror genre, put it more in the action-adventure genre and make it present day, bringing these incredibly rich and complex characters into present day and reimagine them and reintroduce them to a contemporary audience.”
 
Is there a superteam composed of Frankenstein’s monster, the Invisible Man, the Wolfman, Dracula, and the Creature From the Black Lagoon in our future?  It appears that those billion-dollar-earning Marvel epics have spawned a perfect reductio ad absurdum of the entire shared universe superhero concept that is being created by one of Marvel/Disney’s studio rivals desperate to ape the success of the Marvel cinematic universe.