The Mummy is a classic horror story with origins in pulp adventure books of the late 19th century.
The gist of the tale is that an explorer enters an ancient Egyptian tomb, triggering a curse meant to deter tomb robbers.
The curse awakens the shambling, mummified remains of some long-dead pharaoh or pharaoh’s servant.
Though its origins aren’t as old as some classic monster stories, like vampires and werewolves, the mummy is still considered among the staple horror monsters, having been readapted hundreds of times across every medium.
Every supernatural mystery show depicts an encounter with a mummy’s curse at some point in its run, some multiple times.
The last major Hollywood attempt at telling the story was in 1999 and starred Brendan Fraser as an American in the French Foreign Legion.
He inadvertently awakens the mummy while assisting at an archeological dig at Hamunaptra. It was intended as a remake of the 1959 version, which was the film which brought the idea of the mummy fully into the zeitgeist. It did well enough to spawn 5 sequels – two directly, to form a trilogy, then another whole trilogy, The Scorpion King, which served as a sort of prequel. The final film was a bit lack luster, but on the whole it was a fun franchise, which grossed over $1 billion worldwide.
Now that it’s come to a close with the third Scorpion King film, which came out direct to home video last year, Universal want to reboot the series, maintaining all the new mythology they crafted for this adaptation, but telling a new story.
The studio has hired Jon Spaihts, who recently wrote Prometheus for Ridley Scott, to pen this new adaptation. Sean Daniel, who had a hand in the previous franchise, is on board to produce with Universal’s Jeffrey Kirschenbaum in an oversight position. Likely, the plan is to make another franchise out of it.
“I see it as the sort of opportunity I had with ‘Prometheus’,” said Spaihts, according to Variety, “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.”
There are currently no production or release dates for The Mummy.
