Karyn Kusama will tackle the story of the charismatic count with Blumhouse producing and Matt Manfredi and Phil Hay writing the script.

Universal's Monsterverse, left for dead after the middling box office returns of 2017's The Mummy, is now back on track. Just don't call it a Monsterverse this time. On the heels of The Invisible Man's No. 1 opening on Feb. 28 and its $98.3 million haul so far, Universal is taking steps to revive its fabled stable of classic monsters for the big screen. But the new batch of films will be stand-alone, moderately budgeted efforts, rather than big swings within an interconnected movie universe.

The latest is a new Dracula feature that Karyn Kusama (Destroyer) will direct, The Hollywood Reporter has learned. Jason Blum's Blumhouse Productions, which helped kick-start the new monster movie line by making The Invisible Man for only $7 million, is in the midst of setting up the vampire thriller and is producing. The project isn't housed at Universal yet, and technically, it could be made at another studio because Dracula is in the public domain, but that is highly unlikely given that Blumhouse has a first-look deal with the studio and Universal isn't about to let one of its iconic monsters escape the fold. Like The Invisible Man, which offered a contemporary spin on the classic H.G. Wells novel, a new Dracula would take place in modern times, sources tell THR. Matt Manfredi and Phil Hay, who have collaborated with Kusama on a number of films including Destroyer and The Invitation, are writing the script. The Dracula development comes on the heels of another legacy monster project being set up, an untitled horror thriller to be produced by James Wan. The new agenda takes a filmmaker-driven approach to the characters as opposed to a star-driven strategy, something Universal tried when it released the 2017 Tom Cruise vehicle The Mummy. That movie's middling reception — $409 million worldwide off of a $125 million budget — derailed a plan for an interrelated movie universe à la Marvel with stars such as Johnny Depp, Angelina Jolie and Javier Bardem.