November 24, 2023 - The Dark Universe failed due to bad planning and lack of clear direction, causing confusion among potential directors and revealing poor franchise planning.

February 12, 2024 - The Dark Universe, an attempt to create a cinematic universe based on Universal Monsters, failed to gain momentum and was ultimately abandoned.

Answer (1 of 7): They ran before they could crawl. With the success of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, every Film studios wanted to emulate that success, most studio failed because they either didn’t care, or didn’t follow Marvel’s method. It took Marvel several films to build an ...

January 1, 2025 - The Dark Universe had a lot of promise, considering the studio had a successful cinematic universe decades before the MCU even began. The original run of Universal Monster movies, like Dracula, Frankenstein, The Mummy, and more, existed within the same universe, crossing over sporadically during each franchise's original run. Unfortunately, The Mummy reboot failed to revive the iconic monsters, and the Dark Universe was canned before it ever really took off.

February 22, 2024 - Instead of learning from Iron Man, The Dark Universe modeled their film after Iron Man 2 which stops the plot in the middle of the movie to set up future films and never turns out good.

April 23, 2021 - Unfortunately, the project was ... that the Dark Universe was not getting a very warm reception from the audience. In fact, Heisserer admits that one reason why he decided to work on Van Helsingwas because of a growing conviction that the franchise was doomed to failure...

April 14, 2023 - Renfield director Chris McKay thinks the Dark Universe failed as it was too complex with too many moving parts.

March 3, 2024 - Other scrapped films in the Dark Universe included Bride of Frankenstein, Frankenstein's Monster, The Invisible Man, Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde, Dracula Untold 2, and a remake of Van Helsing. The failure of 2017's The Mummy saw Universal's planned Dark Universe fall at the first hurdle, meaning seven movies were canceled as a result.

December 17, 2021 - When a media property fails spectacularly, announces itself with tremendous ambition before swiftly failing to live up to its barest expectations, it is both educational and fun to dissect its corpse. Perhaps the highest-profile failure of recent memory is Universal Studios' attempt to recreate Marvel's success by interweaving their catalog of iconic movie monsters into the short-lived Dark Universe.

October 10, 2023 - Indeed, Universal’s Dark Universe plans put the franchise cart before the proverbial plot horse, since the assumption that The Mummy—brandishing A-list headliner Tom Cruise, exorbitantly budgeted at $120 million—would launch a vast franchise from the outset interfered with the fundamental elements of atmosphere and storytelling. The flaw didn’t go unnoticed by contemporary audiences and critics, resulting in a paltry $80 million domestic gross, which, while boosted to a worldwide total of $409 million by a better overseas performance, fell significantly short of a $450 million break-even mark.

February 1, 2024 - The joint venture between Miramax and Blumhouse was cut down because of creative differences between Kusama and Miramax. Notably, Blumhouse did not take the film to Universal Pictures, and they did not pick the movie and save it.

October 14, 2023 - Universal’s Dark Universe is one of the most notorious failures of a franchise in the 21st century. The idea was essentially to recreate the success of the Marvel Cinematic Universe by utilizing the back catalog of popular monstrous characters that Universal is so well-known for.

August 26, 2021 - Not too long ago, Universal Pictures attempted to kick off their own with the Dark Universe which would have consisted of films based on the classic monster movies like Dracula, Creature from the Black Lagoon, Frankenstein and more. However, they only released one film, The Mummy with Tom Cruise, and ditched any plans they had for the future of the Dark Universe. For a planned cinematic universe to fail after just one film, something must have been impressively wrong.

April 25, 2021 - Unfortunately, the brilliance stopped at the concept, and the films that did see production and were released were not successful. Now, Dark Universe writer Eric Heisserer explains why he thinks the potentially cool franchise failed, despite having big Hollywood names like Tom Cruise and Russell ...

February 22, 2020 - The low critical reception and lack of audience interest made The Mummy a massive failure, and thus the writers and producers of future Dark Universe films jumped ship and the ambitious project was abruptly over.

October 19, 2022 - Yeah this wasnt a "no" to the dark universe, this was a NO to bad movies. Like executives always come up with random stupid reasons why things dont work. But it almost always boils down to: The movie was crap and so didnt do well

December 17, 2019 - I think it's because they only did it for the money. The MCU and Monsterverse were successful because it felt like the people who made the universe actually love the characters. They wanted to make movies people will love.

June 14, 2022 - Indeed, "The Mummy" was lambasted ... Werewolf in London"). The film ultimately flopped, communicating openly that audiences didn't want the DU, and the entire thing was discarded....

December 3, 2024 - Universal aimed for a hybrid action-horror synthesis that both didn’t land and set a confusing tone for the Dark Universe.