1 Jun - Universal is still after Dwayne Johnson to play the Wolfman and Angeline Jolie to portray the Bride of Frankenstein for their newly named monster-centric Dark Universe. It's been about a year since the news hit headlines and though a deal has yet to actually be struck The Hollywood Reporter reaffirms the rumours in a recent feature article on the Dark Universe. Universal has been holding out hope for the two stars for a while now, there's even been reports that the studios greenlit Jolie's 2015 underperformed arthouse "By The Sea" to supposedly curry favour for her to agree to take on the role of the Bride of Frankenstein. Johnson, on the other hand, did previously star in Universal's old Mummy franchise when he debuted his acting career in 2001's "The Mummy Returns" and 2002's "The Scorpion King", but it's doubtful that he would say 'yes' with his schedule being completely packed until 2019 – with his line-up of movies including: "Jumanji", "Fighting with My Family", "Rampage", "Jungle Cruise" and "Skyscraper" with more to come. In 1941, the Wolfman was played by Lon Chaney Jr. in "The Wolfman". Since then, he has reprised his role in four sequels until Benicio del Toro took the role in the 2010 version. Elsa Lanchester took up dual roles in the 1935 classic, "Bride of Frankenstein" as author Mary Shelley and Frankenstein's Bride with Jennifer Beals taking on the role in 1985's "The Bride". Universal plans to have the Wolfman and the Bride of Frankenstein to each have their own movie that will be connected to a series of movies focused on their classic monsters that ultimately makes up the Dark Universe.
Other monsters planned to be featured in the Dark Universe are the Mummy, the Invisible Man and Frankenstein's monster with prominent human characters such as Dr Henry Jekyll and Van Helsing. The Mummy will appear in the upcoming movie, "The Mummy" – starring Sofia Boutella as the titular monster and Tom Cruise as the soldier of fortune, Nick Morton that will try to stop her. The movie will officially kick-start the Dark Universe franchise and will also have Russell Crowe appear as Dr Jekyll – and probably also as Mr Edward Hyde – who heads the mysterious organization Prodigium, that studies, keeps track of and destroys monsters if ever necessary. Jekyll's Prodigium will be the one aspect that connects all of the movies and establishes them as being a part of one cinematic universe. "The Mummy" is set to be released on 8 June in Malaysia and Singapore and on 9 June in Cambodia. The next instalment in the Dark Universe is "The Bride of Frankenstein" which is slated to be released on 14 February 2019 in the U.S. We'll have to keep an ear out on whether Angelina Jolie would ever agree to play the titular character of the movie before its release date.