Heres the trouble with Hollywoods franchise machine, in a nutshell: Studios are so dependent on big-budget adaptations that they will greenlight several years worth of movies before a series first installment has even hit theaters.

This weekend, The Mummy inaugurates Universal Pictures Dark Universe, a streak of films centered on famous monsters that first appeared onscreen in the 1920s and 30s. But the studio didnt even wait for the Tom Cruise spectacle to find success before moving forward with its Dark Universe initiative.

Gunning for a Marvel-esque connected universe , Universal had already announced Bride of Frankenstein (starring Javier Bardem as Frankensteins monster) and The Invisible Man (starring Johnny Depp as Dr. Griffin). The Mummy director Alex Kurtzman has said a Van Helsing script is in the works from Jon Spaihts (Passengers) and Eric Heisserer (Arrival). Kurtzman also revealed last year that the Creature from the Black Lagoon and Wolf Man could be incorporated, as well. Russell Crowes Dr. Jekyll will link these films.

In a new interview with Fandom , Kurtzman casually added a few additional titles to the Dark Universe queue: Dracula, Frankenstein, Phantom of the Opera and The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Especially notable: Phantom of the Opera and The Hunchback of Notre Dame had not yet been mentioned among chatter about the Dark Universes development. Meanwhile, Dracula Untold, the 2014 fantasy starring Luke Evans, was originally intended to kick off the Dark Universe, but Universal has since sidelined that film as a standalone, opting to launch the sequence with The Mummy instead.