“I’ve got the same team together that made ‘Beauty and the Beast‘ and we’re building big sets and designing big set pieces, so it’s a pretty big movie…. We start on February 1st, 2018 so it’s the early days but just to be here in London, starting to see locations and to talk about sets that we’re building, it’s very exciting,” director Bill Condon told ComingSoon optimistically this week. Unfortunately, Universal was a little late in sending out the memo….
The studio has pressed pause on “The Bride Of Frankenstein,” and effectively, that whole Dark Universe thing. Launched this summer to more bemused head-scratching than genuine excitement, the debut picture “The Mummy” was given a burial by critics, and only managed $407 million worldwide. It wasn’t the biggest boost of box office confidence. Still, Universal stuck to their previously planned release date of February 14, 2019 for “The Bride Of Frankenstein” which had Javier Bardem and Angelina Jolie tentatively slated to star. But according to Deadline‘s kind of confusing logic, “the actors aren’t walking away…they are not committing until this all gets rectified.”
So, they’re not walking away or committing. Got it.
For their part, Universal has offered a very vague statement about getting the movie right or something. “After thoughtful consideration, Universal Pictures and director Bill Condon have decided to postpone ‘Bride of Frankenstein,’ ” they said in a statement. “None of us want to move too quickly to meet a release date when we know this special movie needs more time to come together. Bill is a director whose enormous talent has been proven time and again, and we all look forward to continuing to work on this film together.”
Yeah, I’ll put money on Condon, Jolie, and Bardem bailing on this, and getting on with their lives. And if Universal were wise, they’d do the same too.