Late last month, we learned that Leigh Whannell has written and will be directing a new take on Universal's The Invisible Man for Blumhouse, no doubt an attempt to make up for the failed Dark Universe. And we definitely feel Universal is on the right path!
In a conversation with Collider this week, producer Jason Blum talks how The Invisible Man came to be, he also teased the tone and approach for Whannell's take on the classic film.
“I don’t believe in saying ‘We’re going to do movies about this’ and then trying to find a movie about it,” Blum told the site, revealing that Blumhouse doesn't yet plan remaking on the entirety of the Universal Monsters franchise. “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 a director who… we’ve also done six or seven movies with, 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.”
Describing Whannell’s script, Blum continued, “It was 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 thrilling. 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.”
Blum also noted during the interview that the film will be made on a planned budget of five to ten million dollars, paling in comparison to 2017's The Mummy's budget.
Things seem to be looking up for the Universal Monsters...we hope.