Universal assembling a “brain trust” to write its monster movies

By Katie Rife  |  November 13, 2014 | 10:51pm
Aux Features Film

As Marvel did with Spider-Man before it, Universal is assembling a “brain trust” of writers for its monster movies, the difference this time being the brains are in jars. The team of so-called “Monster Men” will consist of Fargo creator Noah Hawley, Prisoners screenwriter Aaron Guzikowski, and Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure and Men In Black screenwriter Ed Solomon. They will be teamed up with producers Chris Morgan and Alex Kurtzman, both successful writers in their own right who have signed on to produce.

The job of the “Monster Men” will be to come up with a plausible way to work Universal’s classic movie monsters into a Marvel-style movie universe. They plan to do this with a method along the lines of a TV writer’s room, where each writer will work on a different script but consult the others for help when they need it, with the group working together on an overall arching continuity for the series and presumably funny, company-specific “The Monster Mash” lyrics for the Universal holiday party.

First up is The Mummy, which will be directed by Kurtzman and is due in theaters June 24, 2015. Then Guzikowski will take the lead in writing The Wolf Man (likely to take the already-slotted date of April 21, 2017), followed by star turns for Dracula, Frankenstein, The Invisible Man, Bride of Frankenstein and vampire hunter Van Helsing. The Phantom Of The Opera, for his part, prefers to work in television.

 
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