Universal has had numerous modern attempts at creating a shared universe featuring their various supernatural film monsters, including such classic characters as the Mummy, Dracula, Frankenstein and the Wolfman. The films have all had varying degrees of relative success and dismal failure. Ironically, viewers can now enjoy the original incarnations of these monster movie franchise through NBCUniversal's Peacock.
With both a free and paid variant of the service, the service already has an extra leg to stand on against such stiff competition as Netflix and Hulu. It also has a bevy of Universal monster flicks from the Golden Age of Hollywood, allowing users to see what the first real cinematic universe looked like.
Monster Cinematic Universe
While browsing through the Peacock app and looking for specific film genres to pick something from to watch, viewers are sure to be blindsided by the incredible variety and options at their disposal. One such option is an entire section dedicated to the classic black and white Universal monster movies. So far, these include, Dracula, Frankenstein, The Bride of Frankenstein, The Invisible Man, Frankenstein Meets The Wolf Man, different versions of The Phantom of the Opera and The Creature From the Black Lagoon. Even the zany, comedic monster mashups featuring classic comedy duo Abbott and Costello are available to watch.
The entirety of the films are not all currently available and are going to be switched out and added in and out of the rotation. This is made clear by the presence of two films in particular: The Brides of Dracula and The Evil of Frankenstein. These two movies were later entries in Universal's monster catalog, releasing in the 1960s. This suggests that other monster films from the genre's resurgence in the '60s and '70s will soon be available as well.
As low budget as some of them may be, even for their time, each of these films carries a certain charm and legacy. This is especially the case with each franchise's initial entry, which are all pop culture stalwarts for a reason. None of these films were made with any sort of connectivity ever planned, so the fact that later films would cross them over so organically is a testament to the characters starring in them. Unfortunately for Universal, they've yet to replicate this formula in the modern era.
Failed Monster Extended Universe
Since the beginning of the 2010s, Universal has tried and utterly failed, to reboot these classic monsters into a modern cinematic shared universe. The first official try at this was 2014's Dracula Untold, but due to the middling reaction to the film, it was decided that it would not become the starting point for the potential new universe. The next film to fill this role was 2017's version of The Mummy, which not only underperformed financially but was also negatively received. This put the future of the entire universe in jeopardy, which was especially bad given how much setup for further installments was put into The Mummy.
This failure means that the 2017 film is so far the only film to bear the 'Dark Universe' logo, with 2020's far more successful Invisible Man having been retooled during production to be a standalone film. There are several planned films in the pipeline that will also give a modern spin to these many times centuries' old characters, including Frankenstein and Dracula. It's unclear when exactly these films will come out or if they will actually try to revive the moribund Dark Universe concept. Perhaps Blumhouse could revive the brand as a whole the way that it has for The Invisible Man and several other creative takes on the horror genre. At least in the meantime, fans can enjoy watching the original classics on Peacock and see firsthand what makes these monsters so timeless.