Imhotep's coffin from "The Mummy", Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC. (Image: Xuan Che, via Flickr / CC)
Universal Studios has decided it’s time to reboot The Mummy franchise with another film after almost four years respite from movie houses.
The producers, including franchise regular Sean Daniel, made up their minds to hire Prometheus co-writer Jon Spaihts as the right person for the job, which involves dusting off Imhotep from his grave and finding a new coat of sandy evil for the villain.
In an interview with 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.”
Stephen Sommers, the first to reincarnate the Egyptian bad hat in 1999, casted Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz in a comedy adventure with a bountiful run at the box office, and pulled off the same trick for another campaign with The Mummy Returns in 2001.
However, Sommers and Weisz went hands off on the third film, The Mummy: Tomb Of The Dragon Emperor, which saw director Rob Cohen and actress Maria Bello taking over their respective positions.
In 2002, the studio released a spin-off entitled, The Scorpion King.
Source: Variety