Universal Pictures has been busy today. First, they handed off a rebirth of Woody Woodpecker from their animation powerhouse Illumination Entertainment and now they want to revive their classic Mummy franchise with one of the writers of the upcoming Prometheus.

Jon Spaihts will be taking the reigns of the script. In addition to Prometheus he’s worked on The Darkest Hour, which was marred in post production rather than his script. He told Variety the following:

“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.”

Sounds good to me. The Mummy got its star back in 1932 for Universal and was followed up with four sequels in eight years. Then it was shelved for a long time until the Brendan Fraser reboot in 1999, which spawned another two sequels in the next decade.

The Mummy brand seems to persevere throughout time, so I see no reason to get down on this. It’s got a talented young writer and a studio that loves its horror properties. [Variety via ComingSoon]

the mummy, universal, universal pictures