Elizabeth Banks to both star in and direct Universal’s upcoming horror film “Invisible Woman” – Top

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Elizabeth Banks will be helming Universal’s horror movie Invisible Woman, developing an original take based on the 1940 movie of the same name. The 1940 original followed a department store model, played by Virginia Bruce, who becomes the test subject of an invisibility experiment. It was the third movie in The Invisible Man series, with the first two movies being The Invisible Man and The Invisible Man Returns.

Initially, Universal wanted to create an interconnected universe called the Dark Universe, revolving around all these monsters from classic novels. Unfortunately, they abandoned their plan when Tom Cruise’s The Mummy was critically panned, earning a miserly 16% on Rotten Tomatoes. Instead, they are now focusing on just making individual films, and letting the filmmakers of each title take charge and do what they want with it.

Elisabeth Moss’ The Invisible Man is the first to be touted out under this new approach, and will be released February 28, 2020. Also in development is the movie Renfield, which will be directed by Dexter Fletcher, who directed this year’s Rocketman. Renfield will be based on the character who appears in Bram Stoker’s Dracula. He was an inmate in an asylum and thought to be suffering from delusions, when he was actually just a servant of Dracula.

Banks made her directorial debut with Pitch Perfect 2, and is the director of the recent Charlie’s Angels, which performed poorly at the box office. She has certainly shown interest in taking on more female-driven narratives, so it would appear that The Invisible Woman is a good fit, and it will be interesting to see what her vision for it is.