After the whole Dark Universe fiasco, Universal Pictures took a step back and rethought their approach to the Universal Monsters, which now seems to involve letting creative people do whatever the hell they want with them rather than forcing them into the same cinematic universe. Sounds good to me. Following the success of Leigh Whannell's The Invisible Man, there are now quite a number of Universal Monster projects in the works, including one focusing on Renfield, Dracula's crazed servant who was so memorably brought to life by Dwight Frye in the 1931 film.
Robert Kirkman (Invincible) wrote the treatment for the Renfield movie — which will be scripted by Ryan Ridley (Rick & Morty) and directed by Chris McKay (The Tomorrow War) — and he recently appeared on Kevin Smith's Fatman Beyond where he dropped a small tease about the project.
We’re doing this cool movie for Universal that’s a focus on Renfield. It’s a story about him being Dracula’s henchman and how shitty a job that is. It’s kind of a fun, extremely violent comedy, because I’ve got a crutch, and it's violence.
Kirkman went on to describe Ryan Ridley's script as "brilliant," which certainly has me intrigued about the whole thing. When the project was first announced back in 2019, it was described as a "comedic, lighthearted" film in the vein of Taika Waititi's What We Do in the Shadows. In addition to Renfield, a few of the other Universal Monster movies in development include a Dracula movie from Karyn Kusama, a Wolfman movie starring Ryan Gosling, an Invisible Woman movie directed by and starring Elizabeth Banks, and more!
The first season of Robert Kirkman's Invincible recently wrapped up on Amazon to near-universal acclaim (check out a review from our own Alex Maidy) and has already been renewed for not one, but two more seasons.