'The Invisible Man' Remake Will Be Low Budget And "Edgy," Lexi Alexander Pitched A 'Mummy' Reboot

Just last month, we learned Jason Blum and his über-successful Bluhouse Productions banner were tackling a remake of The Invisible Man, the first in what could be many revamps of Universal's classic movie monsters. The Dark Universe that began with Tom Cruise's The Mummy in 2017 is dead, which means they're taking a whole new approach to some of horror's most revered monsters. Producer Jason Blum has opened up about how The Invisible Man deal came about and teased a hopeful future for the rest of the Universal monsters.

Meanwhile, Punisher: War Zone director Lexi Alexander is already trying to get on board the Universal monsters retooling with an idea for The Mummy reboot. Alexander has pitched the idea to the studio, but she's not confident it'll get picked up, so she teased what it's all about for those curious.

Collider recently spoke to Jason Blum about The Invisible Man remake and how they came to team up with Universal Pictures for a new approach to bringing their classic movie monsters to a new generation. First of all, they're not counting on building a whole series of interconnected films right off the bat:

"I don't believe in saying 'We're going to do movies about this' and then trying to find a movie about it. So I didn't believe in going and saying 'I want to do all these movies' and then try to find directors to do them. We have [Leigh Whannel], who we've also done six or seven movies with, who pitched us this spectacular idea about Invisible Man. We told him to write it. He wrote it, then we took it to the studio and said 'We'd love to do this and this is what we would do with it,' and they said yes."

Does this mean Blumhouse is heading into bigger budget territory now that they're working with something as big as The Invisible Man? After all, Johnny Depp was once slated to star in the remake, so this would likely be a huge movie for Blumhouse, right? Don't count on it. Blum said:

"It's like the Blumhouse version of The Invisible Man, it's a lower-budget movie. It's not dependent on special effects, CGI, stunts. It's super character-driven. It's really compelling, it's trilling, it's edgy, it feels new. Those were all things that felt like they fit with what our company does. And it happened to be an Invisible Man story, so it checked both boxes. And we responded to it because I think Leigh is just an A+ director."

Universal likely hopes this will be the beginning of a new era for these classic monsters in the way they hoped The Mummy would be two years ago. But Blum isn't getting ahead of himself. They're not making any concrete plans for follow-ups to The Invisible Man right now, though they do hope to get more off the ground. In fact, they've already looked at some of the older scripts intended for the Dark Universe movies. Blum teased:

"We haven't figured it out yet, but we've looked at a couple older scripts and we would be open to doing that."

Considering that the Dark Universe was intended to exist on a larger scale than the kind of movies Blumhouse usually makes, I wouldn't expect many ideas from those original scripts to make it into any new developments for Universal's monsters. But maybe there are some interesting nuggets of ideas in there that can be retooled for what Blumhouse wants to do with the properties.

Even though The Mummy is only a couple years old, Punisher: War Zone director Lexi Alexander already has a pitch for a reboot of the bandaged Universal movie monster. In fact, she already pitched it a few weeks ago. Alexander posted a tease of her idea for a Mummy reboot to Twitter when someone suggested she should direct Marvel's Black Widow movie.

So Lexi Alexander's take on The Mummy reboot seems to be that the monster is terrorizing humanity after the western world has looted the treasures and artifacts of ancient Egypt. And the only way to stop The Mummy is to reverse the Orientalism of the past by returning these pieces to their home. West would meet East as the two work together to stop this ancient force from destroying humanity.

That doesn't sound like a half-bad idea, bordering on an Indiana Jones-esque adventure. In this day and age, the concept doesn't sound as unwanted as Lexi Alexander might think. But it does sound like it might be on a larger scale than the approach that Blumhouse wants to take with Universal's monsters.

Anyway, the possibilities are endless when it comes to the future of Universal's signature monsters, and we're anxious to see what Blumhouse can come up with.