Mama director Andres Muschietti has been offered the chance to direct Universal’s Mummy reboot. Universal found itself at a roadblock last July when director Len Wiseman (the Underworld movies) dropped out of the project, probably because he has his hands full with Fox’s Sleepy Hollow, for which he is executive producer.

Wiseman’s absolutely terrible Total Recall remake somehow grossed nearly $200 million. Universal didn’t want to give up on what appears to be a bad idea, so execs approached Gulliermo Del Toro protege, Muschietti. His Mama made $150 million worldwide on a $15 million budget and starred awesome future A-listers Jessica Chastain and Nicolaj Coster-Waldau.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, the studio described the new Mummy Reboot as “an action-adventure tentpole with horror elements”. This pretty much follows suit with Universal’s previous Mummy films. Of course the most recent Mummy franchise is *technically* a remake of the 1932 film starring Boris Karloff, which was a straight-up 1930’s horror film along the lines of Frankenstein and Dracula, although unlike those movies, the original Mummy did in fact have sequels throughout the 1940’s.

But here’s the thing about mummies (lol bear with me). As a cinematic monster in and of itself, the mummy is not dynamic enough to hold a two hour long horror movie. Think about it. A mummy rises from its tomb via the Book of Dead and chases our protagonists who can’t seem to get away from it and/or break the mummy curse… but how long can this suspense be sustained in a horror film? This is why we only see the “horror” mummy figure in short horror compilations (Tales from the Darkside, Takes from the Crypt). But 1999’s Mummy was clever and tolerable enough because it combined the horror element of an ancient creature rising from the dead with the suspenseful action-film trope of an Indiana Jones-type explorer (Brendan Fraser) navigating his way through cryptic underground quarters, a beautiful and brilliant woman by his side.

Nothing reminds me of cheesy turn-of-the century Hollywood franchises like the Mummy movies. But does the world really need another one? What the world needs is a promising young horror director to make a real mummy horror movie. If his frightening Mama (a ghost movie!) can gross $150 million on such a small budget, why can’t a mummy horror film do the same? 

 

SOURCE: Screen Rant