Universal Hires 'Prometheus' Writer to Reboot the 'Mummy' Back to its Scary Roots

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Jon Spaihts has two produced screenplays to his name: The Darkest Hour and Prometheus. The former, about invisible energy aliens that invade Moscow, tanked at the box office, and, as incredible as it looks, no one has seen the latter, so he's still a mostly unproven quantity as far as audiences are concerned. But as far as Universal is concerned, they're impressed by the sci-fi heavy newcomer, so much so that they want him to take the creative reigns on a new version ofThe Mummy.

Sean Daniel, who produced the trilogy of films spawned by Stephen Sommers' 1999 version of The Mummystarring Brendan Fraser, is on board to produce the currently untitled project. Don't let his involvement think this is going to be another lighthearted, family adventure romp, though. Spaihts tells Variety that he has quite the opposite planned:

"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,"

That sounds intriguing to us. It's been a long time since The Mummy was taken seriously, so we're game for a filmmaker that's going to embrace that side of the classic figure. After all, he is a re-animated corpse. There's no reason he should be anything but scary. Having said that, do keep Spaihts' "epic scale we haven't seen before," in mind. That doesn't exactly scream intimate horror movie to us, so we're sure there's still going to be a large scope here-- at least probably on par with Universal's London-running reboot of The Wolfman, though it'd be nice if this production wasn't nearly as troubled as that one.

We'll keep you updated as more emerges, though it'll probably be a while before that's the case. So until then, feel free to speculate about where the movie should go or if it's even a topic worth revisiting.

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