As a horror fan who appreciates the classics, it was devastating to see what came of Universal Pictures’ Dark Universe, a planned reboot of their entire “Universal Monsters” franchise that would have resurrected Frankenstein, The Bride of Frankenstein, The Invisible Man, The Wolf Man, Dracula, and others all alongside The Mummy.

While we can point to a number of reasons for its failure, Oscar-nominated writer Eric Heisserer (Arrival) saw the disaster unfolding in real-time. Heisserer, the horror veteran who penned remakes of A Nightmare on Elm Street and The Thing, alongside Final Destination 5, Lights Out, and Bird Box, recently reminisced about his experience in the writers’ room where several big-time egos attempted to “crack” open the new Dark Universe.

“It was a very strange experience,” he tells The Playlist. “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?’”

There’s a kicker to the story, which leads to Heisserer and Spaihts (Prometheus, Doctor Strange) choosing to collaborate on Van Helsing for Universal.

He adds, “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]”

Taking a time machine back to 2017, Heisserer had planned something scary.

“[M]y intent stepping in was to make it as scary as possible, partly because I know how to do that, and also because when you’re the only human surrounded by a bunch of supernatural creatures, that’s gotta be absolutely unnerving.”

Channing Tatum had been rumored to be high on the list of Van Helsing potentials for Universal, although we had heard Tom Cruise, who kicked off the Dark Universe with The Mummy (2017), was being set up as the new monster slayer.