The plan was for Universal to continue the Dark Universe that this year’s The Mummy kicked off with a new take on Bride of Frankenstein, with Bill Condon (Beauty and the Beast) attached to direct and a 2019 release date set. We assumed Universal was going to pull the plug in the wake of The Mummy under-performing, but it seems they’re giving the Dark Universe another chance.
Speaking with Forbes this week, Condon revealed that Bride of Frankenstein is now in pre-production, with filming set to begin early next year.
“I’ve got the same team together that made Beauty and the Beast and we’re building big sets and designing big set pieces, so it’s a pretty big movie,” Condon told the site. “We start on February 1st, 2018 so it’s the early days but just to be here in London, starting to see locations and to talk about sets that we’re building, it’s very exciting.”
Condon also spilled some early plot details.
“For me, the James Whale movie is really right there in the pantheon for me,” he noted. “As you know, the Bride is a character who appears in the last five minutes and then is destroyed, so it’s a way to almost continue the movie that you imagine the movie he might have made the third Frankenstein movie but in 2018.”
Bride of Frankenstein, penned by David Koepp, will be released February 14, 2019.
