Aquaman Director James Wan Is Making A New Van Helsing Movie

After the Dark Universe debacle in 2017, the success of this year's The Invisible Man showed that Universal's catalogue of movie monsters could still produce a box office hit. The studio has several other classic monster movies in development, and it's been revealed that Conjuring and Aquaman director James Wan is working on a new movie about Van Helsing.

As reported by Deadline, Wan will produce what is described as "an original horror/thriller" featuring the iconic vampire hunter, who was created by writer Bram Stoker and first appeared in his classic novel Dracula. The film will be directed by Julius Avery, who previously helmed the JJ Abrams-produced World War II horror Overlord. The movie does not have a release date yet.

This isn't the first time that Universal has produced a Van Helsing movie in the last couple of decades. In 2004, Hugh Jackman starred in the critically-panned Van Helsing, and a "present day" movie about the character was in development back in 2016.

The Invisible Man released in February, and although it was only screened for a few weeks before the COVID-19 pandemic shut theaters down worldwide, it still made $130 million at the worldwide box office from a reported production budget of $7 million. Other Universal monster movies currently in development include The Invisible Woman, to be directed by Elizabeth Banks, and Dark Army, which has Bridesmaids director Paul Feig attached.

This May was the third anniversary of the infamous Dark Universe tweet. Universal's extremely short-lived cinematic monster movie universe was officially announced on Twitter in 2017, but the box office failure of the first movie, the Tom Cruise-starring The Mummy, meant that the whole franchise was quickly abandoned. While the Dark Universe website is long gone, the Twitter account still exists, with only two tweets as a monument to its glorious failure.