Paul Feig Shares Details on His Unmade Universal Monster Movie 'Dark Army' [Exclusive] -

Emmy nominee Paul Feig has had no shortage of work over the past few years, between his John Cena and Awkwafina team-up Jackpot! at Prime Video, Netflix’s starry The School for Good and Evil, and now Another Simple Favor, the sequel to his 2018 dark comedy thriller starring Blake Lively and Anna Kendrick. However, one script from recent memory that ultimately went unmade is still on his mind — Dark Army. Announced back in 2019, the film would’ve pulled from Universal’s roster of classic monsters and featured some of the Bridesmaids director’s original creations in a tribute to older James Whale movies. Years of attempts to get the project off the ground didn’t bear fruit for numerous reasons, though, and now he’s speaking out about the film and what kept the ambitious project from marching forward.

Feig attended a screening and Q&A for Another Simple Favor hosted by Collider’s Steve Weintraub, where he was asked about the script he’d most want to make if he could get the financing. He took the chance to reiterate his long-held interest in making Dark Army in some form. Back in 2022, he described the long fight to get the film made as a constant struggle to get the projected cost to a spot that the studio felt was reasonable, telling Christina Radish, “I have to make a monster movie. I have to make my monster movie.” Despite the ideas he had for bringing it to life and the rewrites he underwent to satisfy the studio, reconciling the scope of the project with fears about what it would cost, in addition to trouble navigating the rights for the characters he wanted, proved too great a hurdle to overcome in the end. He explained to Weintraub:

“I was developing this movie at Universal for a while called Dark Army, which was my tribute to the old Universal monster movies that I loved. I thought it was really a fun character that I had, and it brought forward characters from some classic old movies that I couldn’t get the rights to. I wrote it first with all these really famous monsters in it, and they’re like, ‘You can’t get the rights to this, somebody’s making this movie already, we promised this to so-and-so.’ So, I kind of had to invent my own monsters with a couple that were original, but the studio just decided it was going to cost too much. I thought there was a way to do it less expensively, but sadly, that’s sitting in a drawer.”

‘Dark Army’ Was a Passion Project for Feig With Franchise Ambitions

At the time, Dark Army seemed to be positioned well. In the wake of the Dark Universe’s colossal failure, Universal started to turn to more auteur-driven ideas for the classic monsters rather than the expanded MCU-esque franchise they envisioned. Leigh Whannell‘s excellent Invisible Man came out of that process, as did his less well-received Wolf Man, and Feig’s passion for his project seemed likely to carry his film over the finish line as well. Moreover, he envisioned Dark Army becoming a series all its own, mimicking how Whale and Tod Browning‘s films branched out over time.

Alas, that project will likely never see the light of day, but given Feig’s versatility, he may one day get to make the monster movie of his dreams. For now, he has Another Simple Favor on the way, which reunites Kendrick and Lively for a killer wedding in Italy. After being sent behind bars in the original, Lively’s Emily Nelson is out and living her best life, even inviting Stephanie Smothers (Kendrick) to be her maid of honor. Knowing about Emily’s murderous past doesn’t stop Stephanie from accepting the offer and reuniting with her frenemy, despite the potential grudge she may hold. She begins to suspect that it’s all an elaborate scheme for revenge, which only gets messier when a murder takes place at the venue. Henry Golding, Andrew Rannells, Bashir Salahuddin, Michele Morrone, Elizabeth Perkins, Alex Newell, Elena Sofia Ricci, and Allison Janney are also set to star.

Another Simple Favor will be available to watch on Prime Video on May 1. Stay tuned here at Collider for more on what comes next for Feig after the streaming-bound sequel.