Hot off the success of his live-action “Beauty And The Beast” remake at Disney — I mean, I guess you could consider a movie that just cleared a billion dollars at the global box office a bit of a success — it certainly feels like director Bill Condon is set up nicely for his next project. That kind of money tends to inspire studios to hand over blank checks, meaning that Condon could finally get to work on whatever passion project or remake he currently has on his wishlist. And it sounds like the director is not wasting any time, with Deadline reporting that Condon has already lined up “The Bride Of Frankenstein” with Universal Pictures as his next picture (and another entry in the studio’s nascent Universal Monsters shared cinematic Universe).
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For Condon, this move makes a lot of sense. The filmmaker has long described “The Bride Of Frankenstein” as one of his favorite movies, even going so far as to describe it as the inspiration for his work on “The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 1“ in a 2015 interview with Vanity Fair. For Universal Pictures, however, the purpose of the film is considerably less clear. Universal’s efforts at revitalizing its Universal Monsters series have been a little choppy thus far. The studio’s first attempt at rebooting the shared cinematic universe — 2014’s “Dracula Untold” — went so poorly that they’ve officially retconned the movie out of the series, making the upcoming “The Mummy” film starring Tom Cruise the new-new attempt to make something stick.
While there’s certainly a place for “The Bride Of Frankenstein” among Universal’s monsters, one can’t help but wonder if the studio isn’t getting one step ahead of itself by not planning a standalone “Frankenstein” movie first before working on a movie starring his bride. Let’s hope that Condon finally has a chance to get his dream remake off the ground; a weak box office for “The Mummy” could cause a lot of dominoes to fall, and not in a way that’s fun for anyone behind the scenes.
