"Destroyer" Director Karyn Kusama to Direct a New "Dracula" Movie

It seems that the monsters are making their way back to the big screen. After the success of The Invisible Man both critically and commercially Hollywood is doing exactly what we all knew they would do and is greenlighting a bunch of monster movies. We know that James Wan is working on something with Universal and now The Hollywood Reporter has learned that the original vampire is coming back to the big screen yet again. According to sources Destroyer director, Karyn Kusama will direct the movie with Blumhouse producing. At the moment we don't know if Universal is going to be involved with the production but considering that Blumhouse has a first-look deal with the studio it wouldn't be surprising to see them get involved in this project as well.

Sources are saying that Matt Manfredi and Phil Hay are working on a script and it will "a contemporary spin on the classic H.G. Wells novel, a new Dracula would take place in modern times". This isn't that surprising considering that doing exactly that worked out extremely well for The Invisible Man and studios love to find a pattern that works well more than once. In this case, giving the project to someone like Kusama and hopefully keeping the budget small is another lesson that Blumhouse and anyone involved with this project will have learned from The Invisible Man.

We should expect to see other filmmaker focused projects coming out according to THR and that Dracula and the Wan project are one of many.

Now, instead of hearing pitches and reading scripts that tie monsters together, Universal execs are telling filmmakers that storytelling is the star. "It's a 'best idea wins' approach," says one producer, "and they are having the filmmakers find the individual stories."

This is clearly the idea they should have pursued from the beginning with The Mummy and even Dracula: Untold but chasing the Cinematic Universe idea was the thing that everyone was doing at the time. When both of those previous titles failed and the Dark Universe fell apart after one movie it became apparent that something very much needed to change hence the smaller budget and story focused production of The Invisible Man.

The studio is working with filmmakers such as Paul Feig, Elizabeth Banks and John Krasinski, even developing multiple takes on one character, sources say. "They have multiple irons in the fire, but not all will become real," says one agent familiar with the studio's plans.

So far it seems that the higher-ups in charge have learned the right lessons from the mistakes of the past but we'll have to see. If nothing else, Kusama is going to make a really interesting Dracula movie.