Thanks to the insane success of Marvel’s The Avengers, Hollywood is all about interconnected universes now. For better or worse, all of the major studios are looking to build movie franchises around multiple characters that exist in the same fictional universe, facilitating endless crossover opportunities. In the case of Universal Pictures, they’ve had one of these in their back pocket for quite some time now. The Universal Monsters series is one of the earliest examples of a “cinematic universe” with classic monsters like Dracula, Frankenstein, The Mummy and The Wolf Man all teaming up at one time or another to create a loose continuity between them. Now Universal is looking to reboot the whole series with the help of Alex Kurtzman (Transformers) and Chris Morgan (Fast & Furious).

According to Deadline, Universal Pictures is in the early stages of developing a connected series of films that revolve around their library of classic movie monsters. Alex Kurtzman and Chris Morgan will be the ones overseeing the whole series starting with The Mummy reboot, which is slated for release on April 22nd, 2016. That project is still in search of a director after Andy Muschetti (Mama) dropped out a couple of months ago.

We heard rumours about this whole Universal Monsters universe last year but at the time Alex Kurtzman’s partner in crime, Roberto Orci, was going to be involved. He has since chosen to focus on directing Star Trek 3, in the process leaving several other projects including The Amazing Spider-Man 3. It’s unclear if Kurtzman is still planning to direct the Venom movie or write The Amazing Spider-Man 3 himself, but this announcement seems to indicate that The Amazing Spider-Man franchise is going to be on the back burner for a while. Are you looking forward to a modern take on the Universal Monsters series?