Buried alive
Why The Mummy fared so badly at the box office.
UNIVERSAL Pictures built its legacy with horror movies featuring Dracula, Frankenstein and the Wolf Man during the heydays of Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi in the 1930s and 1940s.
More recently, the studio has made a well-publicised bet that it can create a series of successful films by bringing those creatures back from the dead.
But its long-gestating plan to transform oldschool monsters into modern-day blockbusters hit a snag as the big-budget Tom Cruise movie The Mummy flopped at the domestic box office.
The weak opening underscores the challenges facing studios as they seek to revive old franchises for contemporary audiences that have more options than going to the multiplex.
“This is a brand they’re trying to create, and it’s a horrible start,” said Jeff Bock, a box-office analyst for Exhibitor Relations. “There is a learning curve, and that’s what Universal will probably write this off as.”
Studios have always relied on sequels and reboots to capitalise on the popularity of wellknown material. But now entertainment companies are taking the concept further, creating “cinematic universes” made up of films with overlapping narratives and recurring characters that keep people coming back to the theatres and feed toy lines, video games and theme parks.
Walt Disney-owned Marvel Studios epitomised that strategy with a series of successful superhero movies that culminated in two Avengers films. Legendary Entertainment and Warner Bros also have a MonsterVerse featuring King Kong and Godzilla.
The Mummy, which stars Sofia Boutella in the title role and Cruise as a soldier of fortune who must stop the ancient menace, is an uncharacteristic setback for the studio.
The Mummy grossed just US$31.7mil (RM134.9mil) in the United States and Canada, though it did much better internationally but that probably isn’t enough to justify a sequel. Two people familiar with the production said it cost US$175mil (RM744.5mil) to make.
Still, The Mummy is not expected to derail plans for upcoming monster movies in the studio’s so-called Dark Universe, which has been a key initiative for Donna Langley, who became chairwoman of the studio in 2013.
Universal doesn’t have the rights to superheros the way Disney, Warner, Fox and Sony do. What it does have is a vault of classic monster movies that have been ingrained in American film culture for nearly a century.
Universal in May said director Bill Condon will make Bride Of Frankenstein for 2019, after his previous film Beauty And The Beast from Disney grossed US$1.24bil globally. Johnny Depp and Javier Bardem have signed on to play the Invisible Man and Frankenstein’s monster, respectively, in future films. The studio is also expected to try to bring Dracula and the Wolfman back to the big screen.
Nick Carpou, president of domestic theatrical distribution for Universal Pictures, stressed that although the movies will have overlapping elements – including a secretive global organisation that tracks, studies and sometimes destroys monsters – they do not depend on each other like the Marvel or DC movies.
A Mummy reboot had been in the works for years. Andres Muschietti, known for the horror movie Mama, was previously attached, but left in 2014 amid creative differences with the studio. Ultimately, directing duties went to Alex Kurtzman, known for scripting Star Trek Into Darkness and The Amazing Spider-Man 2.
Analysts blamed multiple factors for The Mummy’s struggles. The new film comes after the studio’s popular trilogy of movies starring Brendan Fraser that started in 1999, which many audiences still remember fondly for its goofy take on Egyptian horror. The previews, which emphasised Cruise’s death-defying stunt work, offered little that audiences hadn’t already seen in previous mummy movies or Cruise’s own Mission: Impossible franchise.
Critics’ reviews were overwhelmingly negative and faulted the film for trying to do too much at the same time.
Crucially, the picture’s star, Cruise, doesn’t have the box-office draw in the US that he once did. Recent movies including Edge Of Tomorrow and Jack Reacher: Never Go Back performed tepidly stateside.
Previous attempts to rejuvenate film brands from the past have been derailed by early missteps, including Sony Pictures’ reboot of Ghostbusters.
On the other hand, critics and fans can be won over. Warner Bros bounced back from the critical drubbing of Batman V Superman: Dawn Of Justice, which was criticised for its dark and brooding tone, with a nearly universally well-received Wonder Woman, which has been a major hit. – Los Angeles Times/Tribune News Service