Channing Tatum Eyed To Star As Van Helsing
The night sky was dark, because all the stars were in Universal’s Dark Universe. Channing Tatum is the latest of those stars looking to reinvent Universal’s monster movie classics, where he’s rumoured to be eyeing up the role and possibly the ridiculous wig of Van Helsing.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, that Universal is currently polishing a script for an Abraham Van Helsing movie and that the studio is aiming for Tatum to headline the film. What makes this different from the other names already attached is that the script was developed before his interest was declared – so I suppose you can photoshop him into the cast photo which included Tom Cruise and Sofia Boutella (who played the titular mummy in the first Dark Universe movie of the same name), Russell Crowe (who played Dr Jekyll in The Mummy), Javier Bardem (who will don the bolts of Frankenstein’s monster in Bill Cordon’s Bride of Frankenstein), and Johnny Depp (who will not appear on screen as The Invisible Man).
Universal also continues to court Angelina Jolie to play Bride of Frankenstein and Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson to play The Wolf Man, while Alex Kurtzman is hoping for Michael Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence, and/or Charlize Theron to join in some capacity…probably The Invisible Man’s tailor, Dracula’s orthodontist and Dr Jekyll’s anger management coach or not.
Tatum’s potential casting raises the question just who will play his foe Dracula? Van Helsing is currently being re-written by Dan Mazeau (Wrath of the Titans), based on a previous draft by Jon Spaihts (Doctor Strange) and Eric Heisserer (Arrival). Like The Mummy, Van Helsing will have a modern day setting.
