Remember the Dark Universe? With the success of the Marvel Universe, DC wasn’t the only studio trying to get a universe started. Prior to The Mummy release, it was reported that Johnny Deep was set to star as the Invisible Man and Javier Bardem would play as Frankenstein. Russell Crowe – who makes a cameo as Henry Jekyll – was going to play a Nick Fury-type role as Dr. Jekyll. Other reports suggested Angelina Jolie was being eyed for the role as Bride of Frankenstein. In fact, The Mummy’s director and producer Alex Kurtzman revealed that the following movies were set in stone: Frankenstein, Bride of Frankenstein, Dracula, Creature from the Black Lagoon, Phantom of the Opera, Hunchback of Notre Dame, Van Helsing, Wolfman, and Invisible Man. Fast forward to the opening weekend of The Mummy and the film is trashed by critics. One of the main criticisms about the reboot was that the Tom Cruise vehicle was so preoccupied with setting up its universe that they forgot to focus their efforts on The Mummy.
Now, it was clear that studios were trying to replicate the success of the Brendan Fraser version of the series. The 1990s films were generally considered the very definition of a blockbuster movie, there’s an undeniable fun spirit that carries the first two movies. Though The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor was highly disappointing, and that’s putting it nicely. Still, Tom Cruise is pretty much A-list talent and despite going into the weekend with terrible reviews that didn’t particularly mean that The Mummy reboot was set to bomb. However, this article wouldn’t exist if the movie turned out to be a success. The film managed to garner $410 million worldwide based on a budget of $125 million. That actually sounds good, right? Well, when you eliminate the international sales then the total becomes $80.1 million. It was a failure for domestic audiences and Universal scrapped plans for the entire Dark Universe series. Currently, the property remains up in the air, and Kurtzman himself confirmed that he was off the planned cinematic universe. So, what happened? Why wasn’t The Mummy a success amongst American audiences? Well, greed happened. Let me explain.
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