With the release of the Mummy this weekend starring Tom Cruise Universal Studio's begins the drive to create a connected horrorverse to reanimate the classic monsters. Russell Crowe co-stars as Dr. Jekyll (soon to be Hyde?) as a leader of the multi-national organization named Prodigium which studies evil which exists in the world and hopes to protect the unknowing public. He comes into contact with Cruise's Nick Morton when Morton releases Sofia Boutella's Mummy into the modern world. Universal announced already the next movie in the series will be the Bride of Frankenstein in 2019 and that Cruise and Crowe and Boutella will co-star in it with Javier Bardem (great choice!) starring as Frankenstein's monster and Johnny Depp being the Invisible Man (bespeaking of his career of late?) and they will all carry forward in future movies.

Universal Studios has committed to new movies afterwards to be Frankenstein, Dracula, Creature from the Black Lagoon, The Invisible Man, Phantom of the Opera and The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Money and stars are being poured into this shared universe in the hopes these classic monsters can reconnect with the current movie watchers. Will this succeed and they capture lightning in a bottle again?

I am optimistically looking forward to and wishing them luck because i adore the old Universal Classic monster movies. New iterations of these monsters for today's public is a great thing and hopefully will push us away from the "slasher/torture/bloody" style of horror that has been seen of late. While I like Freddy and Jason in their movies it is this original crew of tortured souls which made horror movies something special to enjoy. I wish them the very best and await wrapping myself up in the Mummy's embrace to see where their new adventures take us. What do you all think about these monster's returning?!?