I’m officially monumentally less interested in Universal’s new cinematic monster universe.   During a roundtable with studio heads from Fox, Paramount, Disney, IFC Films and Warner Bros., Donna Langley of Universal stated that the plan is to take their new iteration of the monster movies “out of the horror genre” and deliver action-adventure versions.  I take this to mean that The Mummy, The Wolfman and the other upcoming movies will be just like Dracula Untold, bear little resemblance to their source material and lean on flashy and empty CG-packed action sequences.

Hit the jump for more on what Langley said regarding the new Universal monster movies.

Here’s the full quote from Langley via THR:

“We don't have any capes [in our film library]. But what we do have is an incredible legacy and history with the monster characters. We've tried over the years to make monster movies — unsuccessfully, actually. So, we took a good, hard look at it, and we settled upon an idea, which is to take it out of the horror genre, put it more in the action-adventure genre and make it present day, bringing these incredibly rich and complex characters into present day and reimagine them and reintroduce them to a contemporary audience.”

This makes the endeavor sound like a total cash grab more than ever.  Taking the horror out of the classic Universal monster movies is basically saying, let’s try to make these iconic characters do for us what superheroes are doing for Marvel.  It’s not going to work, especially for those with a strong connection to the original films.

The Mummy, the Wolfman, Dracula, Frankenstein and the Bride of Frankenstein aren’t superheroes.  They’re monsters and that simple fact alone requires that their films have at least a degree of horror to them.  Just because you couldn't get it right before doesn't mean you give up and abandon what makes the movies stand out and just conform to what's hot at the moment.