Director Alex Kurtzman's The Mummy is the first brick in the wall for Universal's developing Monster Cinematic Universe. This won't be the first shared universe featuring Universal Monsters either, seeing as previous incarnations of Dracula, Frankenstein, The Wolfman, The Mummy and Creature From the Black Lagoon (among others) were unified by a series of crossovers and team-ups from Universal Pictures, released from the 1930s on through to the '50s.
Universal's classic monsters are being reimagined in a genre-bending series of action/adventure films that may present these monsters as being more akin to superheroes and supervillains, in turn making the Monster-verse more similar to the now-established Marvel Cinematic and DC Extended Universes. Tom Cruise is starring in the Kurtzman-helmed version of The Mummy, with Sofia Boutella (Kingsman: The Secret Service, Star Trek Beyond) playing the eponymous monster. A new trailer for the film is now online, as you can see in the space above.
The second trailer for The Mummy shows off more of the heroes and villains that populate this new world of Monsters, in Kurtzman's film. Joining Cruise on the hero side of the equation are Annabelle Wallis (Peaky Blinders), Courtney B. Vance (American Crime Story) and Jake Johnson (New Girl), as the ordinary humans who get caught up on a whirlwind adventure in The Mummy.
In The Mummy reboot, Boutella's Princess Ahmanet is set loose upon the modern world after having been cursed and mummified (perhaps unjustly?) in her own time; awakening with frightening powers that may portend a broader resurgence of monsters around the world. After surviving her initial attack through mysterious circumstances, Cruise's Nick Morton teams with Russell Crowe as Dr. Jekyll, to oppose the impending disaster.
The remainder of the "Monster Universe" slate has yet to be confirmed, though its believed that setups for the ensuing installments and their respective protagonists will be revealed within The Mummy itself. Some fans even speculate that Cruise's character is a modernized version of Dracula nemesis Van Helsing, as Cruise was once set to headline a Van Helsing movie reboot, some years back. Assuming that The Mummy reboot is more successful overall than the Luke Evans-starring Dracula Untold (which failed to kickoff a monster cinematic universe, back in 2014), actively-developing projects such as The Wolfman and Bride of Frankenstein may be the first to follow, thereafter.
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Source: Universal Pictures
