Brendan Fraser vehicles are not the first things that come to mind when thinking of movies with potential for prequel/reboots that examine the profoundly scary origins of evil or whatever, but apparently they are for Hollywood! The Mummy has been tapped for a reboot written by Prometheus writer Jon Spaihts, who even directly compares the two endeavors.
“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.”
Of course there’s no Ridley Scott or Damon Lindelof cooking up the story and no decades-matured franchise “DNA” to riff on, so this isn’t likely to become quite the geek hype-engine.
Original producer Sean Daniels is still involved, and there’s some attention given to the fact that even Rob Cohen’s farted out third film still made $400m worldwide, which (not adjusting for inflation) isn’t too far off from the original film’s total.
Making a big blockbuster amidst Egyptian imagery and sand is a perfectly swell idea, so without the baggage of the franchise’s cast-members, Spaihts pretty much has a lump of clay he can shape into all manner of interesting things. It’s unlikely all that much is going to get carried over from the silly adventures of Fraser and company, so this is sure to be a very clean reboot. It should be noted that Spaihts also wrote The Darkest Hour, so… whatever that means (I didn’t see it).
Maybe next Fox can have this guy write a re-remake of Bedazzled to explore the disturbing origins of hot Satan, starring Michael Fassbender and Marion Cotillard.
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Source | Variety
6 comments
Darkest Hour was ok for a cheap genre flick but its script tended to be fugly.
Darkest Hour ain’t good. Dunno if it’s specifically down to the script. It’s so short and slight, it may have been trimmed aggressively.
Didn’t we get multiple flashbacks to the pre-story in Mummy and Mummy Returns? Hell, wasn’t Rachel Weiss’ character a reincarnation of someone from Arnold Vosloo’s original era? I seem to remember a lot of tedious bullshit that could be considered “prequel territory”.
The Scorpion King was a prequel come to think of it.
I would have thought “Prince of Persia” would make a studio hesitate to launch a new, large-scale desert film.
The dry, sandy well.
Or maybe John Carter’s colossal failure? This has nothing to do with either of those. Execs think Mummy=Success. I’m sure no one thought “Desert=Success.” It’s the property.
If anyone even questioned the setting or production for either PoP or JC, I bet you someone probably blew that off with “those Mummy movies were set in the desert and that didn’t hurt them.” Hollywood execs love past success, which to them is a known quantity, mainly because people are stupid and will likely go see yet another fucking Mummy movie.
Hooey on the desert, we’ve had enough of that – we want lush, green forests. Give us a Central or South American mummy, heck maybe native North American or something that comes out of the Money Pit.
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