Step aside, Brendan Fraser – Universal is giving The Mummy films a makeover. The studio has committed to bring the franchise back to its scary roots and hired Prometheus writer Jon Spaihts to write the reboot. More after the jump.
Variety has the news, and a quote from Spaihts about working on this project:
I see it as the sort of opportunity I had with ‘Prometheus’: 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.
I’m conflicted here: I don’t particularly care for this new trend of rebooting franchises that are only around ten years old, because everyone clearly still remembers the earlier version. But if you’re going to reboot it, I think taking it in an entirely different direction is the way to go, so I applaud Universal for that. As cheesy as it is, I actually really liked The Mummy from 1999, but I think Spaihts is a good choice to separate this new incarnation from the pulpy adventure of the Fraser films.
Stephen Sommers and Rob Cohen brought back the classic Universal mummy in film adaptations in the late 90s and early 2000s, and those three films have earned over a billion dollars worldwide. What do you think about a Mummy reboot?
