Tom Cruise returns to theaters in 2017 with The Mummy, a big screen reboot of the Universal monster movie franchise that is meant to properly kickoff Universal's (rebooted) shared monster cinematic universe. Star Trek (2009) and Star Trek Into Darkness co-writer/producer Alex Kurtzman is directing the supernatural horror action/adventure, based on a screenplay credited to Jon Spaihts (co-writer of Doctor Strange and the upcoming sci-fi film Passengers).
The Mummy opens in theaters in June next year, so it stands to reason that Universal would use the December blockbuster release slate (see Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, Passengers, and so forth) to launch the first trailer and get the film's marketing properly started. That will indeed be the case, as the first trailer for Kurtzman's The Mummy is scheduled to arrive online this Sunday - December 4th - before it starts screening in theaters. Until then however, you can check out a teaser for The Mummy trailer that Universal has unleashed (see the video featured above).
Cruise's costars in The Mummy include Annabelle Wallis (Peaky Blinders), Jake Johnson (Jurassic World), Courtney B. Vance (American Crime Story: The People v. OJ Simpson) and Sofia Boutella - of Kingsman: The Secret Service and Star Trek Beyond fame - as the film's namesake: an "ancient princess whose destiny was unjustly taken from her [who] is awakened in our current day," as the film's official synopsis puts it. The trailer teaser offers a glimpse at what happens when Boutella's antagonist awakens in the present day - in the process, bringing "malevolence grown over millennia and terrors that defy human comprehension."
And on that note - check out the first poster that Universal has released for The Mummy, below:
The teaser for The Mummy trailer provides a brief glimpse at some of its namesake's supernatural abilities (which, apparently, include being able to change her eyes), as well as another key player in Universal's rebooted monster-verse: Russell Crowe as Dr. Henry Jekyll. It's not altogether clear yet how substantial a role Crowe's Dr. Jekyll plays in Kurtzman's film; that is, whether he is essential to the narrative in The Mummy or if he makes a glorified cameo here, as part of the film's universe-building efforts. The full-length trailer for The Mummy may (and, hopefully, will) shed a bit more light on that matter.
If the trailer teaser is any indication, the full-length trailer should only further support what multiple people associated with The Mummy have said in the past: that this reboot aims to be a scary action/adventure, more so than the 1999 reboot of the property (starring Brendan Frasier) was and closer in tone to the original 1932 Mummy film (starring Boris Karloff). Boutella's Mummy herself is expected to be something of a tragic figure; a dark superhero, so to speak, in the vein of Luke Evans' Dracula from 2014's Dracula Untold (a film that may or may not wind up being included in the new monster-verse, as originally planned).
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Source: Universal Pictures
