Things to learn from your Mummy
BOB THOMPSON
POSTMEDIA NEWS
With the franchise on the go, Tom Cruise looks to his Mummy for another serial possibility. Cruise goes all out in the remake of which features a nasty Egyptian princess spirit (Sofia Boutella) as evil incarnate.
Here are some things you should know about The Mummy:
The first Mummy monster movie showed up in 1932 with Boris Karloff portraying the swaddled terrorizer. Five more Mummy pictures followed in the ’30s, ’40s and ’50s, if you count
— and why wouldn’t you?
Britain’s Hammer Productions took over the franchise into the ’70s with four more Mummy’s followed by the Hollywood reboot in 1999 with Brendan Fraser. It led to two more and spinoffs.
The latest scary Cruise picture is meant to be the start of something big, as well. It may lead to more revivals — and among them. The collaborative arrangement was already negotiated. Cruise and producer-director Alex Kurtzman worked together on The antagonist in the movie is more alluring than usual. Algerianborn Boutella, who portrays the betrayed Egyptian princess as the ghoulish one, is on a roll. She had her breakout as the blade-running slice-and-dice assassin in 2014’s and she played Jaylah in last year’s Rumour has it that she was hired for her
role before Cruise landed his. Most of the sets were constructed at Shepperton Studios in the outskirts of London to accommodate the multiple special effects. Filmmaker Kurtzman did make it a point to construct as many actual exteriors as the story would allow. That meant at least 50 sets in England, France and Namibia were real, not computergenerated.
Box office trackers project at a $40 million opening weekend in Canada and the U. S. The film’s monetary strength will be in the international market, although there is no guarantee.
So far, indications are positive. Time and moviegoers will let the studio know if there is a monster mash-up in its future. bthompson@postmedia.com