Wild to me that they didn't immediately cancel the theme park plans when this fiasco of a film franchise bombed
Eh, the value of Dracula, Frankenstein's Monster (and the Bride), the Mummy, and Wolfman, and to a lesser extent the Invisible Man, Jeckel/Hyde, and Creature from the Black Lagoon, if these constitute the core of the Universal Monsters, is still pretty strong. Theme park rides tying in the older films and just the pop culture zeitgeist of these beings is a good idea. The newer films, eschewing the source material (such as it is) and attempting to revamp the concepts without really understanding their appeal in the first place was a big misstep, as was hiring expensive trendy actors all at once in a forced attempt to "make the Dark Universe happen". A lot of these beings are products of their times and can't work nearly as well in a modern context in order for them to all coexist, but I don't think, in the right hands, its an inherently unsolvable problem (League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, for example, did it quite well [refering to the comics]).
But as a dad who grew up on these B&W universal monster films on rainy saturdays, I'm totally down to dragging my kids to go to it. That it is paired up with much more current IPs like Mario, How to train your dragon, and yet another Harry Potter land ensures it doesn't have to be a single draw.
deadline.com
