Creature From The Black Lagoon Remake Picks Perfect Director

As a director of the film, Creature from the Black Lagoon will be Wan’s first since his production company, Atomic Monster, merged with Blumhouse in January. Famously creating Billy, the puppet for Saw, and revolutionizing the PG-13 horror genre with Insidious, which has a gripping and genuinely scary plot that doesn’t include too much gore or violence, Wan is well placed to adapt a 3D horror classic for a modern audience.

The original Creature from the Black Lagoon follows a team of researchers looking for fossils on the banks of the Amazon River who accidentally stumble upon a humanoid gill-man in the Black Lagoon. This evolutionary throwback is captured by the scientists, but he manages to escape and tragically falls in love with the fiance of one of the group. Filmed in 3D, the original Creature from the Black Lagoon trilogy was the last of Universal’s classic monster franchises, also having the most sympathetic monster.

Wan pitched the new concept to Universal with collaborators from Atomic Monster, Michael Clear, and Judson Scott. Their recent success with M3GAN has spurred a sequel, M3GAN 2.0, and a spinoff titled SOULM8TE, a definite strength for the company going into talks with Universal for Creature from the Black Lagoon. As a part of the deal, a screenwriter will be hired to work closely with Wan on the new adaptation.

Wan’s prowess as a world-builder who can capture the fleeting attention of an audience will help him to develop a modern adaptation of Universal’s Creature from the Black Lagoon, as the studio has pivoted to a more film-maker driven approach to their modern monster remakes.

In 2019, Jason Blum of Blumhouse directed the modern retelling of Invisible Man for Universal, bringing Leigh Whanell of Saw and Insidious on board as a writer/director. With much of the current lineup for the upcoming Creature from the Black Lagoon project already having ample experience collaborating, Universal can expect an excellent result from their team.

There have been several failed attempts to reintroduce the Creature from The Black Lagoon, with John Landis taking a stab at it in the 1980s and John Carpenter and Ivan Reitman having a go at it in the 1990s. In the early 2000s, Gary Ross, son of the original screenwriter, took a shot at it as well as Breck Eisner. In 2010, Universal intended for Will Beall to write an updated script for their now-defunct Dark Universe project. Wan will hopefully be more successful than his predecessors at getting his script produced.

While there’s not much yet known about the content of the new script, the concept will be one of visceral horror in a modern, grounded format. The plan is for Wan to pay respect to the original while weaving his own magic into the story of the Creature from the Black Lagoon. Although it’s a tall order, especially given the previous failed attempts, Wan is perfectly positioned to tackle the project.