The Mummy not only wants to be a critical and financial success.

It also seeks to launch the Universal Studios‘ storyverse called the Dark Universe.

In addition to The Mummy, the Dark Universe will include, according to director Alex Kurtzman speaking to Fandom:

“We know we’re going to do Frankenstein, Bride of Frankenstein, Dracula, Creature from the Black Lagoon, Phantom of the Opera, Hunchback of Notre Dame, and Invisible Man…. There are characters within those films that can grow and expand and maybe even spin off. I think that digging into deep mythologies about monsters around the world is fair game for us, as well as connecting the monsters that we know to some surprising monsters could also be really interesting.”

Universal has a rich history of monster movies spanning many decades.

Andrew Liptak on The Verge speculates that Universal could build storyverses out of their upcoming films and their back catalogue:

• Dune
• World War II
• Conan the Barbarian
• Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon

He concludes with:

“It’s no secret that sequels and reboots are big business, and while the above suggestions are a bit tongue-in-cheek, many of these big studios have huge back catalogs that they can easily mine for years to come — provided audiences continue to tolerate that.”

My take: big, successful storyverses have tended to be science fiction (Star Wars) or comic book superheroes (Marvel and DC). Beyond individual stories, beyond multiple characters, Universal really needs to establish a compelling world with a core conflict of good versus evil to have a chance. Think transmedia. Personally, I think the path forward here is to reboot the “Abbott and Costello and Monsters” franchise. Ellie Kemper and Louis CK, anyone?