Featurette takes viewers behind the scenes of The Mummy

Last Updated on July 31, 2021

Yesterday, the first trailer for Universal's new reboot of THE MUMMY was released, and along with that trailer comes a featurette that offers a behind the scenes look at the making of the film.

Director Alex Kurtzman and stars Tom Cruise and Sofia Boutella (the mummy herself) are among those who provide interview snippets to guide the viewer through the featurette, which packs quite a bit into its two and a half minutes – mention of the respect the filmmakers have for the original Universal Monsters movies; the hope of honoring them with this new film; focus on action sequences and locations, with a glimpse of Cruise and co-star Annabelle Wallis working in a Zero-G environment for the filming of the plane crash featured in the trailer; and a bit about a fight scene between Cruise's character and Russell Crowe's Dr. Henry Jekyll.

The revelation of the Cruise / Crowe fight was the most interesting thing about this featurette to me. As THE MUMMY is the first film in the Universal Monsters Cinematic Universe that the studio is hoping to build out of multiple reboots of their classic monster properties, a series of films that will see the monsters interacting with each other, I thought Crowe's Jekyll would be introduced in this film and would start having his Dr. Hyde problems in another movie somewhere down the line. Instead, it appears that Hyde is already lurking within Jekyll.

THE MUMMY was written by Jon Spaihts and has the following synopsis: 

Thought safely entombed in a crypt deep beneath the unforgiving desert, an ancient queen whose destiny was unjustly taken from her, is awakened in our current day, bringing with her malevolence grown over millennia and terrors that defy human comprehension.

From the sweeping sands of the Middle East through hidden labyrinths under modern-day London, The Mummy brings a surprising intensity and balance of wonder and thrills in an imaginative new take that ushers in a new world of gods and monsters.

The film is set to be released on June 9, 2017.