Abraham Van Helsing was first introduced in Bram Stoker‘s 1897 novel Dracula. Inevitably, the character made his way into the 1931 Universal feature Dracula, portrayed by Edward Van Sloan (who would reprise the role in Dracula’s Daughter in 1936). In the original novel, Helsing’s presence is only requested by the main characters because of his knowledge of diseases. When the figure was translated into other media, he morphed into someone whose entire job was based around knowing everything and anything about monsters. Helsing would prove a fixture of various Dracula adaptations in the years to come, including Peter Cushing‘s incarnation of the character in the Hammer Dracula features and Anthony Hopkins inhabiting the role in the 1992 motion picture Bram Stoker’s Dracula.

Though Van Helsing has been a fixture of Dracula media for decades, he’s rarely headlined solo adventures. The classic Universal Monsters movies milked those chilling beasts for endless spin-offs, yet Van Helsing never got a solo outing from Universal in the 30s and 40s. That all changed with the 2004 Hugh Jackman blockbuster Van Helsing, which saw the leading man of the X-Men franchise portraying this character. Doing okay at the box office but being reviled by audiences, Van Helsing seemed to spell the end of this character’s solo movie career. However, in the 2010s, Universal, in its attempts to milk its vintage monster characters, constantly tried to launch a new Van Helsing reboot. This studio was dedicated to this classic element of Dracula yarns…so why did none of these projects happen?

The famed monster hunter is sent to Transylvania to stop Count Dracula, who is using Dr. Frankenstein’s research and a werewolf for nefarious purposes.

What Happened to Guillermo del Toro and Tom Cruise’s Van Helsing Movie?

Universal brass never offered specific clarification on why the studio was so dedicated to rebooting Van Helsing as a leading man again given that the character never headlined a feature prior to 2004. Shouldn’t Creature from the Black Lagoon or The Phantom of the Opera reboots have taken precedence over this vampire hunter? Universal executives likely thought the 2004 feature had done just well enough to put the character’s name on people’s radar and wanted to work from there. It would take some time to remind audiences about new takes on Captive Wild Woman or The Mad Ghoul. A Van Helsing reboot could just build on people already knowing about the Hugh Jackman feature.

Plans for such a feature began brewing in June 2010 when news broke that Guillermo del Toro was scripting a new version of Van Helsing. This auteur loves monster movies, so it’s no surprise that he’s been connected to a slew of different remakes of the Universal Monsters characters over the years. The idea of him tackling Van Helsing could’ve been an intriguing way to give this production some creative weight beyond just helping to manage Universal IP, but del Toro quickly took himself out of the running to do this feature. His initial plans to pursue a long-desired At the Mountains of Madness film adaptation meant he had to leave Van Helsing by the end of July 2010. Interestingly, Tom Cruise was already signed on to produce del Toro’s Helsing feature and was also eyeballing the chance to star in the movie.

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The presence of Cruise here reflected an intense desire between himself and del Toro to collaborate, as seen by the pair being later set to reunite on that Madness adaptation. However, it was also an eye-catching detail that crystallized the kind of talent already swarming over this new Van Helsing feature, not to mention Cruise’s interest in tackling a new Universal Monsters movie. Two years after the del Toro/Cruise version of Van Helsing went bust, writer Alex Kurtzman offered an update on the project, including that he would be writing it and a new iteration of The Mummy. This was the start of Kurtzman being a key architect in Universal’s plans to relaunch its monster characters as blockbuster stars that would eventually result in the Dark Universe.

Long before the Dark Universe became a punchline, though, Kurtzman spoke hopefully about his vision for Van Helsing. This writer specifically mentioned that titles like The Dark Knight had set audience expectations for grounded approaches to genre material, which he felt he’d apply to both his Universal monster projects. Realism would be the name of the game for this incarnation of Van Helsing. By the end of 2012, director Rupert Sanders (who had just helmed the feature Snow White & The Huntsman for Universal) was looking at helming Kurtzman’s Van Helsing title, which would star Cruise. This action star was back in the saddle again, ready to portray this vampire hunter even with del Toro nowhere in sight. However, grander plans for the Universal Monsters character would grind this incarnation of Van Helsing to a halt.

What Happened to Universal’s Dark Universe?

In October 2013, it was officially announced that Universal would be chasing the tail of The Avengers by rebooting its Universal Monsters as a new interconnected saga. The priority immediately became to get a new Mummy feature off the ground, with Van Helsing getting shoved to the back of the line. However, even as Kurtzman and Cruise moved on to tackle The Mummy, a Van Helsing reboot wasn’t entirely abandoned. By July 2016, Eric Heisserer and Jon Spaihts were penning a new script, with Heisserer noting that the character of Mad Max influenced their version of Van Helsing. Just as the Dark Universe had been birthed from The Avengers, now this new Van Helsing was taking a cue from Mad Max being popular again in the wake of Mad Max: Fury Road’s box office success in 2015. Such derivative impulses did not bode well for this reboot.

By the end of 2016, Spaihts would confirm that this new Van Helsing movie would be set in the modern-day world and that he held passionate hopes for Helsing showing up in other titles across the Dark Universe. In a separate interview a few months later, fellow writer Heisserer noted that this version of Van Helsing stemmed from his idea to have some non-superhero folks saving the day in modern big-budget movies. “I don’t like the idea that we’re infusing our public and our pop culture with the idea that only super people can solve the world’s problems,” Heisserer explained before noting that grounding Van Helsing as an everyman who used his wits to save the day would be a counterbalance to this influx of super-powered saviors.

These comments on the Van Helsing reboot all came about just a few months before The Mummy debuted in theaters in June 2017. The equivalent to Iron Man in the Dark Universe in terms of kicking off a wider universe, The Mummy did not mimic that Marvel feature in terms of box office or critical reception. In fact, this Tom Cruise star vehicle absolutely wiped out at the box office. It was beginning to look more and more unlikely that Universal would be able to get a fresh cinematic universe in the modern world out of its monsters. Still, hope springs eternal, and a report emerged by the end of July 2017 (nearly two months after The Mummy’s cataclysmic box office performance) that Channing Tatum was being eyed to take on the role of Van Helsing.

Between Tom Cruise anchoring The Mummy and actors like Angelina Jolie, Javier Bardem, and Johnny Depp signing on to portray other Universal Monsters, the Dark Universe was clearly intent on getting as much A-list talent assembled as possible for these tentpole projects. While the MCU had launched stars like Chris Hemsworth and Tom Holland, the Dark Universe wanted to build off established movie star personas. Channing Tatum would’ve fit into this ambition, even if it’s amusing to imagine him playing a bookworm scientist. Audiences never got the chance to see how Tatum would handle this character, though, since the Dark Universe would eventually crumble into dust. This Van Helsing reboot went onto the shelf with this development.

Will Van Helsing Ever Rise Again?

At the start of 2020, Universal finally found success in a modern reboot of a Universal Monsters character with the low-budget horror feature The Invisible Man. Rather than spending hundreds of millions of dollars on MCU knock-off blockbusters, Universal was finding success in letting scary characters be scary. With this box office success, a slew of other new iterations of classic Universal horror movies were announced, including yet another take on Van Helsing. This time, Overlord director Julius Avery was tasked with making this character work in a solo movie. The choice of Avery (a veteran of horror movies) as the shepherd of this feature suggested Universal wanted this production to be a low-key horror tale rather than a VFX-driven action extravaganza like the 2004 Van Helsing project.

There has been no further word on this iteration of the production in the years since Avery was attached to direct it. Meanwhile, the character of Van Helsing has gone missing from recent Dracula-centric movies released by Universal such as Renfield and The Last Voyage of the Demeter. Even though Universal brass clearly has some sort of commitment to the idea that this character can sustain another feature-length outing, all that passion hasn’t resulted in another Van Helsing solo movie becoming a reality.

The quality of that 2004 Ven Helsing feature and so many of the 21st-century movies adapted from the Universal Monsters mythos makes the lack of a new vision of Van Helsing hard to sob over. It’s especially easy not to mourn whatever madness was conceived for Van Helsing in the Dark Universe. Sometimes, certain characters don’t need to be rebooted in grounded reality. Sometimes, they should just be supporting players in classic movies while modern audiences get brand-new characters to enjoy. Still, Universal hasn’t let Van Helsing go quietly into a cinematic crypt for years now. It’s doubtful this studio will cease its ambitions for more solo adventures for this character anytime soon.

2004’s Van Helsing is available to rent on Prime Video and Apple TV+ in the U.S.

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