Alex Kurtzman knows his way around a franchise. The writer-director-producer had a hand in creating million-dollar tentpoles out of Transformers and Star Trek, in addition to scripting the second installment in The Amazing Spider-Man series. With his latest, a reboot of The Mummy starring Tom Cruise, he hopes to not only resurrect the iconic bandaged baddie, but spawn an entire cinematic universe of Universal Monster movies, to be known as the Dark Universe.
“It’s like childbirth,” Kurtzman told ET of the anticipation he feels over fans finally being able to see his take on The Mummy (in theaters now). “The head is crowning, so you’re just waiting for the whole world to see your child. It’s exciting! It’s been a long journey.”
ET: In terms of building this new cinematic universe, which came first: the idea of rebooting The Mummy or this plan to build the Dark Universe?
Alex Kurtzman: The idea to bring The Mummy back. The Dark Universe was an agenda that kind of evolved as the script developed, in looking for ways to tell a new Mummy story while honoring the classic Universal Monsters films. One of the ideas that emerged was this idea that she [Sofia Boutella’s Princess Ahmanet, the titular mummy] exists in a larger continuum of monsters and maybe was one of the earliest ones, but certainly not the last one. Once that began to take shape, we began to think about bringing other monsters into the world and folding them under one umbrella. That’s how Dark Universe came to be.
Why is The Mummy the best choice to launch this universe?
The Mummy is so familiar to people. It has endured for so long, because it asks some really fascinating questions about life after death.
And the mythology of The Mummy has always been so interesting. Because it is so familiar to people, we wanted to give them an entry point that was easy, and yet, we wanted to do it in a way that felt fresh and different. That’s why we led with The Mummy.This is, essentially, a reboot of two movies — the original Boris Karloff The Mummy from 1932 and the Brendan Fraser franchise from the ’90s. What were the things, while watching those films, that you wanted to hold on to?
To me, the defining trait of all monster films is that you are scared of the monster and you sympathize with the monster. I love that about the Universal Monster films. They are, in many ways, a genre unto themselves for that reason. I wanted to honor that. I wanted to find a story for our mummy that was different and interesting and sympathetic and complicated.
The mummy’s power to mesmerize was something that, obviously, originated in the Karloff film, and I loved the idea of applying that to a Tom Cruise movie, because we know that Tom Cruise is always going to save the day. But the minute you have a mummy inside his head controlling him in a way that even he doesn’t understand, everything becomes very unpredictable. I thought that was exciting. And there’s a dagger that features very prominently in the Karloff film that we pay homage to in ours.
Did you ever consider a Brendan Fraser cameo, just as a little Easter egg for the fans?
We wanted to tip our hat to it, and there are two moments that do that in the film [including the Book of Amun-Ra, which Fraser’s character use to defeat Imhotep in 1999’s The Mummy]. We never really talked actively about bringing Brendan Fraser in, because he lived in a very different time period than the modern day and so he would be potentially not even alive. [Laughs] Unless he himself were a monster, it didn’t seem like he would make a whole lot of sense. And if he were a monster, then we would have had a lot of explaining to do about why he was there.
Tom Cruise toplines so many franchises, with Mission: Impossible and the Jack Reacher movies and now Edge of Tomorrow and Top Gun are both getting sequels. When you are setting out to create a new franchise, do you ever worry about casting a guy who already has too many?
Not really, because I think what I love about Tom and the films that he has done is that he has this amazing track record of playing very morally challenged characters in a very likable way. For me, as an audience member, it’s far more satisfying to watch somebody who’s messed up and broken and discovers their better self than it is to watch someone who is perfect. And in order to really do that right, you need a movie star. And very few of them can do it. I’ve been a lifelong fan of his, starting back at Risky Business and Top Gun and Taps. To be able to take that and work with him, for me, was just too exciting to pass up.
I actually started thinking about whether franchise saturation exists because of Dwayne Johnson. Everything he’s in becomes a franchise and now there are rumors he might get a Wolf Man franchise, too.
Who knows! But it’s true. I mean, there are certain actors who bring with them this “I want to see him again in that story” quality. And…
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