Continuing its extended streak of decline, the box office was down almost 30 percent this weekend from the same weekend last year. It’s too early to tell, but for my money, this story is a perfect example of the kind of visionary thinking that’s going to turn this whole thing around! Len Wiseman, director of Live Free or Die Hard and the Total Recall remake, is in talks to direct a reboot of The Mummy for Universal. You remember The Mummy, right? The infamous horror villain whose only power is a limp and was only useful as a last-minute Halloween costume for poor kids? Well I think I speak for all of us when I say “PLEASE MAKE SIX MORE MOVIES ABOUT THIS, HOLLYWOOD OH GOD I CAN’T GET ENOUGH.”
For the record, the last Mummy movie was The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor (aka The Mummy 3), which came out in 2008. Though there were also the spinoff Scorpion King movies, and there were three of those, the last one starring Ron Perlman and Billy Zane.
Universal Pictures is setting Len Wiseman to direct The Mummy, the reboot of a franchise whose most recent incarnation grossed $1.25 billion over three films. Jon Spaihts is writing the script and the studio is eyeing a potential summer 2014 release, so things are moving quickly, with Universal eager to ramp back up one of its most venerable franchises.
The film is being produced by Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci through their Universal-based K/O Paper Products. Latter two produced the version launched by Steve Sommers which starred Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz. That trilogy was based on the Karl Fruend-directed Boris Karloff starrer that the studio made in 1932.
“When I first heard Universal was relaunching this, that is the image that popped into my head, the period tale, the old monster, but when Bob and Alex pitched it, there was a great new take and approach, and a very different mummy as well,” Wiseman told me. “It’s a darker twist on the material, a scarier version.”
HOLY SH*T, YOU’RE GOING TO MAKE IT DARKER AND MORE GRITTY?! THIS IS AN APPROACH I’VE NEVER HEARD OF BEFORE! Of course, it’s true that I just fell off the turnip truck.
They have already figured out how to get around the reason I feel the original doesn’t really hold up so well. The bandaged title character moves so slowly than he is no more difficult to elude than a single zombie.
“One of the things that interested me with this mummy is, he’s still in essence a man,” Wiseman said. “They haven’t turned his brain into a monster brain. He still has a personality and is very cunning and calculating. He’s a true character in any form, and in creature form, even if he is that staggering creature, it becomes more important that he’s a thinking, calculating person.” [Deadline]
Do you think it hurts him as much to give these quotes as it hurts us to read them? Or if you’re Len Wiseman, does the not-completely-full-of-sh*t part of your personality eventually just get like a battered wife who only speaks when spoken to? YOU QUIET DOWN, PERSONALITY, I’VE VACUOUS ASININE SOUNDBITES TO GIVE! “The good thing about mummies is that they stagger, but also have brains herpy derp herp durpity derp do I get paid now?”
I’ll bet you a lot of money that if this ends up happening that it doesn’t screen for critics.