The 'Dark Universe' Movies Reflect The Problem With Hollywood's Franchise Machine

Here’s the trouble with Hollywood’s 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 didn’t even wait for the Tom Cruise spectacle to find success ...