Is it too soon to remake The Mummy movie franchise? Not according to its Universal Pictures owners who have hired Prometheus and The Darkest Hour screenwriter Jon Spaihts to come up with a fresh concept on the dusty tomb dweller.
"I see it as the sort of opportunity I had with Prometheus," Spaihts said to Variety, the source of the original story break. "To go back to a franchise's roots in dark, scary source material, and simultaneously open it up to an epic scale we haven't seen before."
A decade and a half ago, Universal had brought a previously unseen epicness to the Mummy story by giving it to director Stephen Sommers. He wrote and directed 1999's The Mummy which starred Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz, and which brought large scale effects to the concept of a resurrected Egyptian pharoah. The movie was a hit and spawned two sequels, 2001's The Mummy Returns and 2008's Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, as well as a spinoff titled The Scorpion King.
Spaihts is Hollywood's favorite child for taking high concept sci-fi projects to. His two spec scripts, Shadow 19 and Passengers, attracted the attention of development execs and brought him work on Ridley Scott's Prometheus (which was then extensively changed by Lost writer/producer Damon Lindelof) as well as The Darkest Hour.
The worst part was when the giant sand mummy opens his giant mouth to eat you whole, and you're screaming "OH NO I'M ABOUT TO BE EATEN ALIVE!!", but then you're just inside a sandstorm and it's not so bad.
Jakester wrote:
I don't think they were good enough to warrant a reboot of the franchise, but I certainly have no issues with them rebooting The Mummy as a classic movie monster.
People don't like it when they remake/reboot good movies cause they are untouchable, and they don't like it when they remake/reboot bad movies cause they were bad. That doesn't leave many movies. I'd guess that trying to take story ideas from bad movies and making them into new, possibly better movies isn't a bad idea. At least there's room for improvement in that scenario.
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Jakester
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Posted: 8 years 42 weeks ago
The first three movies were cheesey fun. I enjoyed them as fun popcorn adventure movies.
I don't think they were good enough to warrant a reboot of the franchise, but I certainly have no issues with them rebooting The Mummy as a classic movie monster.