‘Van Helsing’ reboot to be a horror film, set in modern times, focus on character’s ‘resourcefulness’
Universal’s classic monsters cinematic reboot kicks off with The Mummy during the summer with a Van Helsing film in development, written by Eric Heisserer Arrival and Jon Spaihts Passengers.
Heisserer spoke with Collider about his approach to the material, which has been confirmed to be more of a horror tone than the more action-adventure Hugh Jackman-led film about the vampire hunter character.
“I don’t know what it’s going to look like at the end of the process, so I’m gonna withhold on commenting on really where it lands. I can say that my intent stepping in was to make it as scary as possible, partly because I know how to do that, and also because when you’re the only human surrounded by a bunch of supernatural creatures, that’s gotta be absolutely unnerving.”
Heisserer teased a bit about his take on Van Helsing, coming in specifically to write Van Helsing or how the writers’ room assembled generally.
“We all came in without putting a flag down on any of those certain monsters or films, just talking about how we saw the world working and what we wanted to explore. Sometimes we’d talk about themes, and Jon and I just found ourselves kind of on the same page in terms of what we wanted to see Van Helsing explore. It was a natural team-up, I think. It was just a conclusion that we all reached around the table that he and I would work on that together.”
He did tease that he and Spaihts’ take is a contemporary film, and that he wanted to ditch the superhero blockbuster take.
“Well I guess the biggest thing that’s already been said is it’s contemporary, it’s a modern-day reimagining… I can talk about my emotional state of what I’ve been passionate about or sometimes frustrated by are the number of films where we find an extraordinary character with superhuman abilities that becomes a hero to solve a problem that a normal person cannot solve. And I was eager to try and buck that trend and showcase someone who had no extraordinary powers, just resourcefulness and will and kind of a stubbornness who’s able to tackle some of these bigger problems. Because 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. I like the idea of the everyday hero stepping up to the plate and getting things fixed.”
No official date, but once casting gets underway there will be news. Some fans point to Comic-Con has the time and place for a new batch of updates on the Universal Monsters.
