Was Tom Cruise originally set to play Van Helsing in the Dark Universe? The success of Bram Stoker's Dracula in 1992 briefly led director Francis Ford Coppola to consider a spinoff featuring Anthony Hopkins' Van Helsing. Dubbed The Van Helsing Chronicles, this new adventure would have seen Hopkins' vampire slayer fighting new creatures, but it ultimately went nowhere. The notion of a movie featuring the character didn't totally die away though, with Stephen Sommers eventually directing blockbuster Van Helsing in 2004.
Van Helsing starred Hugh Jackman and Kate Beckinsale, with the duo battling Dracula, his Brides, a Wolfman and Frankenstein's Monster. The movie was set to kick off a major franchise and launched with video game spinoffs and an anime prequel. The movie received mostly poor reviews for its noisy action, poor dialogue and overload of cartoony CGI, and its box-office haul was disappointing. A spinoff TV show was cancelled following its reception and no sequel followed.
Universal has a rich stable of classic movie monsters, including Dracula, the Mummy, the Creature From The Black Lagoon and so on. In the early 2010s the studio decided there was potential gold to be minded from a shared universe featuring these icons, but rather than horror movies, they wanted to make action blockbusters. Writing team Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci later signed with the studio to oversee new takes on The Mummy and Van Helsing in 2012, with Tom Cruise set to lead the latter.
In interviews that followed this announcement, the writing duo didn't spill many details about their Van Helsing project, other than it being set in the present day and that it would be relatively grounded. Rupert Sanders was also connected to the director's chair, but following the breakup in the creative partnership between Kurtzman and Orci in 2014, the former would later sign to helm The Mummy with Tom Cruise starring. This led to rumors Cruise was secretly playing Van Helsing in the movie and would reappear in other movies in the Dark Universe.
Except this proved not to be the case, with Cruise's character ending the movie fused with Set, the God of Death, essentially making him a heroic Mummy. Development continued on the Van Helsing movie throughout this period too, with co-writer Jon Spaihts confirming it would be a more "romantic" take on the character and he would potentially appear in other movies if the Dark Universe took off. While it's unknown if the filmmakers ever considered Tom Cruise's character actually being Van Helsing in The Mummy, he was definitely signed to play the legendary hunter in a solo adventure. Van Helsing also feels like it would have been a better fit for the star's talents, but when it was decided to make The Mummy the first entry in the Dark Universe, the studio likely wanted to save the hunter for another movie.