Screenwriter Jon Spaihts, who co-wrote Marvel’s latest blockbuster, will be even more in-demand after Doctor Strange exceeded expectations with an $85 million opening weekend and already has an impressive $325 million global cume. Aside from that project, Spaihts also penned The Mummy, the Alex Kurtzman-directed reboot and first film in Universal’s Monstersverse.
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While the 1932 original, starring Boris Karloff, relied an eerie mood and atmosphere and the 1999 reboot, starring Brendan Fraser, brought fun and adventure to the franchise, the 2017 reboot, according to will Spaihts, “legitimately explore the frightening and the cosmic.”
“In The Mummy, I think we’re going to see the first Mummy film in the entire Universal canon with the true power to terrify,” Spaihts told The Hollywood Reporter. “The earliest [Boris] Karloff and Bela Lugosi Mummy movies were scary in a small way, perhaps a dated way. They were almost parlor movies. Subsequent movies have been more swashbuckling. This one is going to have all of that action and adventure, but a legitimate power to terrify. I think that’s going to be the new experience of that film.”
Tom Cruise headlines a spectacular, all-new cinematic version of the legend that has fascinated cultures all over the world since the dawn of civilization: The Mummy.
Thought safely entombed in a crypt deep beneath the unforgiving desert, an ancient queen (Sofia Boutella) whose destiny was unjustly taken from her is awakened in our current day, bringing with her malevolence grown over millennia and terrors that defy human comprehension.
From the sweeping sands of the Middle East through hidden labyrinths under modern-day London, The Mummy brings a surprising intensity and balance of wonder and thrills in an imaginative new take that ushers in a new world of gods and monsters.
The cast features Tom Cruise (Jack Reacher, Top Gun), Russell Crowe (The Nice Guys, Gladiator), and Sofia Boutella (Kingsman: The Secret Service, Star Trek Beyond), as well as Courtney B. Vance (The People Vs. O.J. Simpson), Annabelle Wallis (Annabelle, Peaky Blinders), Marwan Kenzari (Ben-Hur), and Jake Johnson (New Girl, Jurassic World).
Alex Kurtzman, the screenwriter and producer behind Star Trek Into Darkness and The Amazing Spider-Man 2, is on board to make his directorial debut, working off of a script penned by Jon Spaihts (Prometheus, Doctor Strange).
The Mummy will lumber into theaters June 9, 2017.
