The Mummy tanked at the box office.
With the shared universe concept off the table for Universal, the studio later elected to go ahead with a one-off Invisible Man film directed by Claude Rains as a scientist who gave himself the power of invisibility and went mad as a result. That film was followed up in 1940 by The Invisible Woman, which starred Virginia Bruce as a model becoming invisible after volunteering to be a test subject for a scientist.
With Universal casting about for unique takes on its classic characters, the studio reportedly has tapped Banks to both star in and helm a new version of The Invisible Woman (via American Psycho and, importantly, has nothing to do with the Wannell/Moss Invisible Man.
In addition to the Invisible Man and Invisible Woman, Universal has reportedly launched development on the Dexter Fletcher directed Dark Army from director Paul Feig. These movies are all expected to exist independently, with no cross-over stories as originally planned under the Dark Universe concept.
Banks of course rose to fame as an actress in everything from the series Kristen Stewart, Naomi Scott and Ella Balinska in the lead roles. Unfortunately, the movie failed to scare up any business at the box office, limping to just $43.9 million in worldwide grosses thus far.
After the box office failure of Sony’s Charlie’s Angels, it’s certainly good to see Universal giving Banks a chance to come in and direct a genre film with significant box office potential (many of course complain that non-white-male filmmakers seldom get chances to rebound after flops). Both The Invisible Man, with its stalking theme, and The Invisible Woman with its apparent feminist angle a la Thelma & Louise wedded to the craziness of American Psycho sound like promising one-off projects that should satisfy classic horror fans while putting interesting new spins on old characters.
Source: THR
