Universal Taps Underworld Director to Reboot The Mummy

We here at The Mary Sue don’t exactly hide our love for the Brendan Fraser/Rachel Weisz era of the The Mummy. After all, Evie Carnahan is one of our favorite Action Librarians. They’re action/horror movies that didn’t really seem to be made for any reason other than to show the audience a good time, and if they had some outdated tropes and clichés in them, at least it seemed like it was part of a conscious attempt to make a comedy that referenced another era of adventure film, not an unconscious one.

Which is why we’re a little sad to hear that that Len Wiseman, the guy behind Underworld, is Universal’s choice to make their Hammer Horror monster into a brand new franchise. See Rachel Weisz face up there, Universal? That’s the face we’re making.

According to Deadline, Jon Spaihts, the writer behind Prometheus who wasn’t Damon Lindelof, has been tapped to write the script, but the movie at least shares the same infamous action producers as it’s previous incarnation: Kurtzman and Orci. But don’t get your hopes up: this Mummy isn’t even going to be a period piece. Says Wiseman:

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… It’s a darker twist on the material, a scarier version.

I wonder if anybody will be firing a crossbow. Kurtzman and Orci were vague, but it seems we’ll be getting a Mummy with a scientific origin, not a mythological one. Ah, well. My guess is when this hits theaters in 2014, the Fraser/Weisz Mummy will still be a movie I’d love to spend a sick day with, and the new Mummy won’t.

(via Deadline.)

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Susana Polo

Susana Polo thought she'd get her Creative Writing degree from Oberlin, work a crap job, and fake it until she made it into comics. Instead she stumbled into a great job: founding and running this very website (she's Editor at Large now, very fancy). She's spoken at events like Geek Girl Con, New York Comic Con, and Comic Book City Con, wants to get a Batwoman tattoo and write a graphic novel, and one of her canine teeth is in backwards.

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