The Universal Monsters shared film universe will kick off with the reboot of The Mummy, starring Tom Cruise. A second mystery monster movie due is due in April 2018, and now the studio has announced a third film that will be released in theaters in February 2019. More on the story below.

The Wrap was the first to report on the story. There is speculation that the 2018 film could be Johnny Depp’s Invisible Man. But it is not clear what the newly announced 2019 film could be. Though the trade believes it could be The Bride Of Frankenstein, which is being written by David Koepp; The Wolfman, which has Aaron Guzikowski (Prisoners) penning the script; or something else entirely. Noah Hawley (Fargo) is also working on a mystery monster movie that has yet to be named.

Alex Kurtzman (Star Trek, Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen, The Amazing Spider-Man 2) and Chris Morgan (Fast & Furious) are the brain trust of Universal’s Monsters Universe. In addition to being one of the creative heads, Kurtzman is also directing The Mummy.

Universal had attempted to launch a monsters universe previously with Dracula Untold, which starred Luke Evans in an origins story of Dracula. The film had a teaser that featured another character that was supposed to be the Nick Fury of the Monsters Universe. However, the film didn’t meet the studio’s box office expectations and they were forced to scrap those plans and restrategize.

Though the month of February has historically been reserved as a dump month for studios, recent successful films have shown that is no longer the case. The only other competition the Untitled Monster Movie has in February 2019 is Paramount’s SpongeBob Squarepants 3, which will open on February 8th, one week before Universal’s latest monster movie.

With the popularity of shared universes on the rise, Universal plans to get the aforementioned monsters together for some sort of Avengers-style film with these iconic characters. It should be interesting to see what draws these famous characters together. Hopefully, it doesn’t feature some sort of shoehorned MacGuffin. Kurtzman has said that despite the shared universe aspect, the films will still maintain the horror tone by honoring their roots. He has also said that some monsters might not get their own features and will appear only as secondary characters. So that should be interesting to see how they combine action and horror without making it too cheesy, and which characters will get their own films while others are regulated to be secondary supporting ones.

The monsters and characters that weren’t mentioned are Frankenstein, Dracula, The Creature From The Black Lagoon, and Van Helsing. We’ll keep you posted on any updates when they come in.

[Source: The Wrap]