Scribe hired to reboot popular franchise.
Universal Pictures is planning to once again reboot ‘The Mummy’ franchise, and has hired screenwriter Jon Spaihts (‘Prometheus,’ ‘The Darkest Hour’) to tackle the screenplay.
A loose remake of the 1932 classic starring Boris Karloff, the 1999 movie directed by Stephen Sommers and starring Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz took in $415 million at the box office. Its sequel, ‘The Mummy Returns,’ took $433 million, and the third, ‘The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor,’ grossed $401 million when it was released in 2008.
Sean Daniel who served as producer on the franchise, will return to produce, with Universal’s Jeffrey Kirschenbaum overseeing.
Talking to Variety, Spaihts said, “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.”