(CBR) Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci have becomes the go-to guys for Hollywood genre films. They helped J.J. Abrams shepherd “Star Trek” back to the big screen and also had an important hand in the success of Michael Bay”s “Transformer” movies, and in May 2012, Universal Pictures announced the writer/producer duo would help rejuvenate properties like “Van Helsing” and “The Mummy”.
Both films are in the works, but recently Orci talked to IGN about the potential for a shared universe for these projects and more:
There”s an interesting thing that could happen at Universal where they have this amazing library of their old monsters and these kinds of heroes, and the idea of trying to create a universe. Van Helsing, and we”re also producing The Mummy for them. We”re kind of imagining updating these kinds of things. You don”t want to just make remakes when you”re doing a thing, unless it”s worthy of being a remake, but when you have an idea for something that can actually be made different and yet be true to what it was. We just had a notion of how to make it modern and have a slightly different tone. It”s not going to be just a remake.
The Universal Monsters gang includes Frankenstein, the Bride of Frankenstein, the Mummy, Dracula, the Wolfman, the Phantom of the Opera and the Invisible Man. For the most part, they stuck to their own films, but did cross over in a pair of movies: “Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman” and “Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein”, which also featured Bela Lugosi”s Dracula.
When asked what film he”d like to tackle, Orci said he loves Frankenstein “because there”s such a twisted, complicated monster, a monster who”s not actually a monster.” If they can bring those more complex themes to the big screen with new versions, the beloved monsters will be in good hands.