Sci-Fi Bulletin: Exploring the Universes of SF, Fantasy, Horror and Spy-fi!

Alasdair Stuart analyses the latest from the Mummy-verse:

First off, if you’ve never seen them, run, do not walk, to the nearest streaming service or your disc library and watch The Mummy and The Mummy Returns.

You’re back? Cool! Aren’t they brilliant? For those who don’t have 2-4 hours spare, here’s the Cliff Notes. The Mummy movies are glorious Indiana Jones-alikes, starring Rachel Weisz and John Hannah as Evey and Jonathan Hammond, a pair of siblings dragged into the hunt for the treasures of ancient Egyptian city Hamunaptra. Evey wants to find it to prove her worth as a librarian, Jonathan just really, really loves money. They hire treasure hunter Rick O’Connell (Brendan Fraser) and immediately clash with Imhotep (Arnold Vosloo) a mummified Egyptian priest with plans for immortality. Aided by a wide variety of folks including Oded Fehr as guardian Ardeth Bey these movies are incredibly good fun, gleefully frantic and responsible for at least one generation of bisexual awakenings. They’re a blast, and now, years after the catastrophic Tom Cruise reboot, they’re back!

The Hollywood Reporter confirms that Weisz and Fraser are in talks to return, and I wouldn’t be at all surprised if Fehr and Hannah were coming back too. Also interesting is that the directors are Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett, better known as Radio Silence. Responsible for the last two, excellent, Scream movies as well as the brilliant Abigail and Ready or Not, they’re a perfect fit for the series and their combination of humour and horror is exactly where The Mummy sits.

Where this sits in the three movies to date is unclear although THR’s source suspects Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, the third movie, is being quietly retconned. While we don’t know yet, we do know who’s writing the movie. David Coggeshall, the writer behind the surprisingly great Orphan: First Kill and recent Netflix horror movie The Deliverance is penning the script.

One last interesting note is that this is not the only Mummy movie on the way. Lee Cronin, director of the spectacular Evil Dead Rise, has also directed a Mummy movie being produced by James Wan (of a dozen Blumhouse movies) and Jason Blum (of a dozen Blumhouse horror franchises). It’s a small scale movie that’s already wrapped principal photography and stars multiple favourites in these parts including Jack Reynor and May Calamawy. That’s now been retitled The Resurrected, which in retrospect looks a lot like some runway clearing being done for the incoming Radio Silence movie.

Mummy movies! Always fun! And now two new ones are on the way! Imhotep will be PLEASED.