“It was a very strange experience,” he said. “There was certainly a big brain trust of writers around the table. You had a lot of voices and none of them could agree on much. Much like when I’d visit my relatives for Thanksgiving and everyone’s arguing with each other…You had some people saying, ‘Should our monsters all be villains in these movies or can they all be heroes?’ And someone else would say, ‘We can build the plane when we fly it.’ And it’s me and Jon Spaihts at the table going, ‘That’s a terrible analogy. We don’t want to be on that plane. What are we doing here?’”
Heisserer and Spaihts (who had a story credit on “The Mummy”) were set to collaborate on the Dark Universe entry “Van Helsing,” which was first announced back in early 2017. That project has been scrapped in favor of a film directed by Julius Avery with a script from “Black Widow” scribe Eric Pearson. Heisserer also explained the reason why he and Spaihts chose “Van Helsing” as their Dark Universe entry in the first place. “This is sort of a terrible motivation, but we were also like, ‘You know? I don’t think some of these movies are going to work at all. So what if we create the character that kills the monsters in the movies that don’t work?’ [Laughs.]” The Dark Universe catalogue is packed with iconic monsters, including Dracula, Frankenstein, the Mummy, the Wolf Man, the Creature from the Black Lagoon, and, of course, the Invisible Man. Eric Heisserer is an Oscar nominee for “Arrival,” and his fantasy series “Shadow and Bone” is now streaming on Netflix. Sign Up: Stay on top of the latest breaking film and TV news! Sign up for our Email Newsletters here.
