Universal have announced they are moving forward with a reboot of their MUMMY franchise, hiring in-demand scribe Jon Spaihts to pen a new “dark”, “epic” take.

Spaihts recently co-wrote Ridley Scott’s PROMETHEUS, and Universal want the same treatment applied here. (He also wrote THE DARKEST HOUR. But everybody seems to be rightly ignoring that fact.)

Sean Daniel, producer of all four previous MUMMY movies, will shepherd in this new version too.

While we can’t imagine there is a single one of you reading that isn’t stifling a yawn right now, each of the previous movies (and spin-offs) earned a shedload at the box office, so it’s clear that there’s still an audience for this.

Personally, the Mummy legend has been retold a dozen times over, so even though they’re bandying around the dreaded ‘R’ word, it’s not like they’ll be looking to reinvent Rick O’Connell & Evy Carnahan.

The property is one that could seriously use a revamp by stripping it of its Ricks, its Scorpion Kings and its hugely annoying kid sidekicks. This could be quite interesting.

We’ll have more as it develops…

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