Looks like someone at Universal took a gander at Sony re-booting the Spider-Man franchise after the last outing in 2007 and thought both, ‘Hhm… maybe we should tap that reboot reservoir...’ and, ‘Pah! 2007? Lightweights. We’ll up the ante and relaunch something that last saw cinemas in 2008!’ Hence today’s announcement that the studio has decided to reboot The Mummy.
The producers – including franchise veteran Sean Daniel – have decided that Prometheus co-writer Jon Spaihts is the man to dust off Imhotep and give him a new coat of sand and evil. "I see it as the sort of opportunity I had with Prometheus: 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," Spaihts tells Variety.
Stephen Sommers brought Universal's veteran Egyptian troublemaker back to life in 1999, after a classic Boris Karloff effort back in 1932 and a few remakes / spin-offs in the 1940s. Sommers cast Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz in a comedy adventure that scored big at the box office. He pulled off the trick a second time in 2001 with The Mummy Returns. Both Sommers and Weisz passed on the third film, The Mummy: Tomb Of The Dragon Emperor, which found Rob Cohen at the helm and Maria Bello taking over for Weisz. And don’t forget the 2002 spin-off The Scorpion King (though everyone, including us, is still trying to forget the cheap DVD sequels to that one.)
So now we wait and see what Spaihts does with the Mummy universe. Will Fraser’s Rick O’Connell still be present, even if the actor isn’t? Will Prometheus' Damon Lindelof be called in to write the second draft, with everyone denying that is has a direct connection with any other Mummy adventure? What? Could happen….