Could one of Hollywood’s greatest undead monsters finally come back? After the utter failure of Tom Cruise’s 2017 The Mummy and the eventual dissolution of Universal’s Dark Universe franchise, there are signs of life in the tomb.
A Blumhouse reboot of The Mummy, directed by Lee Cronin, is officially underway. On March 24, the director posted the movie’s first clapperboard, confirming the monster flick is happening. But can a new Mummy top the 1932 classic, or the beloved Brendan Fraser films? It’s certainly possible, because, unlike so many other classic monsters, The Mummy doesn’t really have to be anything specific.
Unlike the hit Universal monster movies that arrived in 1931 — Frankenstein and Dracula — what made The Mummy so fantastic is that it wasn’t a direct adaptation. Because of its faux-historical origins in a fictionalized ancient Egypt, The Mummy had the veneer of being from another era. This put it on equal footing with Frankenstein and Dracula, which were adapted from old novels. Because The Mummy wasn’t based on a bestselling book, it was one of the first monster movies to derive its novelty from itself (screenwriter John L. Balderston did pull some mythology from the Book of the Dead, an ancient funeral text, but it’s not like audiences were consulting their papyrus scrolls after seeing the movie).
The 1999 Brendan Fraser-led Mummy was a huge success despite the fact it wasn’t trying to resemble the 1932 version. Writer-director Stephen Sommers understood that the best approach to making a new Mummy was to make a new movie. Sure, you need an undead monster, some weird magic, and Egypt, but that’s pretty much it. The strength of The Mummy is that it lacks any real canon, making reboots and remakes uniquely positioned to always survive on their own merits.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, the Lee Cronin Mummy will star Jack Reynor as “a husband and father who runs afoul of supernaturally sinister forces.” That description could easily apply to several characters in classic horror movies, like Pet Sematary. It's a generic set-up for an open-ended horror concept.
That generic premise is The Mummy’s strength. Cronin’s horror chops are strong, and his 2023 Evil Dead Rises was decent. Hopefully, he can bring a new approach to The Mummy, one that doesn’t need to remind us of previous versions. What makes the franchise an immortal horror icon is its ability to be reborn in ways that barely relate to what came before. When The Mummy was new, it felt old. Now the opposite can be true.
