Alex Kurtzman Says Universal Monsterverse Will Be Horror Movies After All

Remember when they were making a connected universe of Universal Monster movies and they were all going to be set in the modern day and be action films? Guess what: they still are! Sure we've heard zilch about them in recent months, but they're still plugging along quietly. 

Alex Kurtzman appeared at the TCA March of Death and talked a bit about the development on the films, saying that despite reports they were action films they're still horror: 

I think there was some lost in translation quality to the way it was received, because I promise you there will be horror in these movies. It is our life goal to make a horror movie. The tricky part is actually how you combine horror with either adventure or suspense or action and be true to all the genres together. In some way, Mummy, dating all the way back to the Karloff movie, was the first to do that. It was the first to combine horror with — I wouldn’t say action, but certainly a lot of suspense. So it’s more about how you blend the different elements and stay true to each one, but there will definitely be horror in the monster movies…We will hopefully serve it up good and plenty.

Is there horror? I have been privy to a draft of The Mummy and I can tell you that while it is a horror to read, the horror elements were tangential at best and could have been replaced with aliens or a virus or any other bullshit that allowed soldier men to shoot at pixels. The real horror, I have heard, is the behind-the-scenes development process, which has included the torture of screenwriter John Spaihts. I'm not sure if he's even still on the project - I don't actually know what is going on at the Monster Division, and I haven't heard a peep from any of my sources in months and months, so maybe they've been consumed by the horrors. 

Now that Universal is making all the money in the world maybe they're taking this initiative more seriously. Or, possibly, since they saw Jurassic World proves you don't need a good script or anything, maybe they're letting Kurtzman really run roughshod on the films. We'll know soon, as Kurtzman threatens pending announcements.