The legend of Vlad the Impaler promised a dark, epic return to the big screen, but nearly a decade after Dracula Untold hit theaters, fans are still left asking: where’s the sequel?
The first film was intended to kickstart Universal’s ambitious Dark Universe. It was a relative success at the box-office, with a worldwide total of $215.5 million against a budget of $70 million. Yet mixed critical reception meant that the desire to return quietly fizzled out.
So what went wrong?
And is there still a chance we could see Dracula Untold 2 in the future?
Is Dracula Untold 2 Happening?
Dracula Untold 2 is not currently in development, and Universal Pictures has no active plans to produce a sequel to the 2014 film.
Despite Dracula Untold ending with a clear sequel tease and performing well at the box office, the collapse of Universal’s Dark Universe franchise and multiple failed monster reboots ultimately stalled any follow-up.
While the film’s success once positioned it as a potential franchise starter, Universal has since shifted its strategy away from large-scale monster epics—leaving Dracula Untold 2 unlikely, but not entirely impossible.
For now, fans cans only speculate as to whether Vlad will ever rise from the shadows again.
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Dracula Untold: The First Film
Directed by Gary Shore and written by Matt Sazama and Burk Sharpless, Dracula Untold is based on the famous work ‘Dracula' by Bram Stoker, but with a little twist added in his origin story.
Here, Dracula is the real-life historical figure Vlad III "the Impaler" Dracula, who finds his kingdom and his people repeatedly threatened by the armies of Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II.
Desperate and out of options, Vlad stumbles upon a Master Vampire and is forced to make a deal with the devil to protect his family. As he struggles to balance his killing urges with the love he has for his wife and son, Vlad will soon find out that his ‘salvation’ might just have doomed him and everyone around him for eternity.
Although Vlad’s wife Mirena is killed in the film (spoiler alert!), an interesting post-credits scene sees Vlad following a woman who resembles her wife in the present day, leading to all sorts of intriguing questions. Did Mirena also survive, and if she did, what will the two vampires be up to today?
It is clear that this post-credits scene was meant to tease a sequel, if the film made enough moolah at the box office. Setting up a love story spanning across generations is certainly an interesting idea for the second bout, with both Dracula and her wife forced to navigate the rapidly changing winds of human civilization.
Was Dracula Untold Actually a Box Office Success?
Dracula Untold was a hit, making three times its production cost plus additional revenue in streaming and home media releases. The success of the film gave Universal some much-needed confidence in their monsters.
This confidence had been somewhat wobbly after the last monster movie, 2010’s The Wolfman starring Anthony Hopkins and Emily Blunt, had sputtered at the box office. So there was a unique chance here that Universal would greenlight a sequel.
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How the Dark Universe Killed Dracula Untold’s Sequel Plans
However, quietly and at the same time, Universal had been developing its own shared universe.
Inspired by the success of the MCU and DCEU, Universal had long sought to create its own cinematic rival that would mesh immersive storytelling across multiple films with an Avengers-style crossover at the end.
Since they did not have rights to any superheroes to begin with, they settled on their classic monsters instead. Calling it the ‘Dark Universe’, the first entry was The Mummy reboot, starring Tom Cruise as Nick Morton and Sofia Boutella as Ahmanet.
There were rumors that one week before Dracula Untold was to release, some reshoots had quickly taken place to tie the film into this planned cinematic universe. Universal quickly came forward to deny that such a thing had occurred, although everyone knew they were probably hiding something.
These rumors were partially confirmed when Dracula Untold Producer Alissa Phillips expressed hope that Evans' character might have a cameo in a future that Universal was setting out for the classic monsters.
Director Gary Shore would later make it known that if Universal wanted to use the film as a launching pad for their shared universe, they were free to do so. After the film had been released, the connections to the shared universe were diluted, and The Mummy (2017) was calibrated to be the first film in the series.
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Universal’s Shift to Blumhouse Changed Everything
While Universal deliberated to determine what to do with the Dracula Untold sequel, they suffered an unexpected financial failure when the Mummy reboot crashed and burned.
While the film had its fair share of action and scares, what ultimately let it down was the shared universe baggage that it was forced to haul. At this time, Universal had been neck deep in planning the franchise.
Angelina Jolie had already been cast as the Bride of Frankenstein, and her film was well in pre-production with a 2019 release date. Johnny Depp was signed on as The Invisible Man, and Javier Bardem was confirmed to be Frankenstein’s monster. The Mummy had lost close to 100 million dollars and this resulted in torpedoing all the work Universal had done up till then.
The so-called ‘Dark Universe’ was dead, and with it, so too was a Dracula Untold sequel.
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Nobody knows what this sequel would have looked like.
Maybe it would have been a standalone feature, or maybe it would have been worked into the Dark Universe itself. Universal, confused by what to do with the property and wrecked by the failure of the Mummy, cut its losses and retreated.
However, this would not be the last time they revisited Dracula as merely 9 years later, Universal would release ‘The Last Voyage of the Demeter’, another Dracula feature, which too would bomb at the box office.
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Could Dracula Untold 2 Ever Happen?
So there are next to no chances of a sequel to Dracula Untold happening anytime soon.
Although the film was a box office success, Universal has moved away from the model of expensive, effects-laden monster features; instead, it has adopted the Blumhouse model of low-budget, high-impact thrillers featuring their classic monsters.
The studio has already had stellar success in this regard when it released The Invisible Man in 2020, although their 2025 remake of The Wolf Man received a muted response.
With more failures than successes in their classic monster movies, Universal is wise to tread water carefully when it comes to greenlighting another creature feature.
Therefore, fans hoping for a new Dracula Untold film should not be too optimistic, but since this is Hollywood, anything can happen.
