Here Be Monsters

The Mummy Returns may have received a critical mauling, but its success at the box office ($430 million) has ensured that writer/director Stephen Sommers is still having his calls returned at Universal. Now, fresh from his dealings with all things mummified, Sommers is turning to another popular horror genre to whet the public's appetite. The action-adventure movie Van Helsing will be based on the monster hunter created by Bram Stoker. The screenplay, which will begin filming this Autumn, takes Van Helsing - memorably portrayed by Anthony Hopkins in Coppola's Dracula - to various Eastern European lands in search of fabled monsters from Dracula to Frankenstein. We can only pray that this time somebody in the production process thinks to spend as much time fleshing out the script as they do planning the special effects.