'Creature From the Black Lagoon' Finds Its Voice, Set to Return From the Deep

Universal has tapped scribe Will Beall to write the Black Lagoon reboot. For Beall, there must be something in the water, because this is his second aquatic movie in a row, hot off of DC’s upcoming Aquaman entry.

In the 1954 classic The Creature From the Black Lagoon, the iconic “Gill-Man” was a member of an ancient race, discovered in the Amazon by a scientific expedition but long known to natives by way of legend.

The Gill-Man strikes terror in this 1954 publicity still for the original film. (Mary Evans/Universal International Pictures (UI)/Ronald Grant/Everett Collection)
The Gill-Man strikes terror in this 1954 publicity still for the original film. (Mary Evans/Universal International Pictures (UI)/Ronald Grant/Everett Collection)

An abandoned remake in the 2000s reportedly updated Gill-Man’s origins, depicting him as the result of pharmaceutical pollution in the Amazon.

Beall aims to revive the creature as a part of the “Universal Monsters” cinematic universe. The crossover franchise almost began with Dracula Untold (2014), but that movie failed to take a bite out of the box office, so it’s being definitively rebooted for real this time, kicking off with The Mummy in June 2017.

It’s likely the Black Lagoon film will be more action-adventure than horror and set in the present-day. In a November 2014 Hollywood Reporter roundtable, Universal chairman Donna Langley suggested that was to be the case for the entire Monsters universe, in order to make the classic creature features more accessible to modern audiences.

The new Black Lagoon film is slated to be the fifth film in the series, with no release date announced as of yet.

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