With so many movies in development at once at any given time, it's only inevitable that certain elements may unintentionally (or not) mimic each other. This happened to be the case when Universal Pictures was developing THE MUMMY, the first of their planned Universal Monsters shared-universe. Originally the Mummy was planned to be male and the production team had arrived at a design which they were pleased with which saw the character as having been born with a skin pigmentation which made him an outcast in ancient Egypt. Alex Kurtzman recently told CinemaBlend that everything changed once he saw the post-credit sequence from X-MEN: DAYS OF FUTURE PAST.
I was going down that road, and then I saw the end of Days of Future Past. And they had the character that Oscar Isaac wound up playing as a boy, and it was, I kid you not, the exact same design. And I was like, 'Oh, man! That is not good!' And actually it was the catalyst, it was the moment of, 'Okay, not only is this not going to be different enough, Bryan Singer just did it, I definitely don't want to go down that road.' I had had that voice in my head for some time to make it a woman, and that was the moment where, the minute I saw that post-credits scene, I went, 'We have to start over.' I don't want to mess around even remotely with anything that feels familiar or feels like it's been done. I have to go in totally new territory.'
As we know, big changes were made to the character and the role of the Mummy was soon filled by Sofia Boutella (STAR TREK BEYOND). Alex Kurtzman credits the change as being the best thing for THE MUMMY as it let him take a leap which led to new directions he wouldn't have seen otherwise.
In a way it was very helpful to me, because it made me take that leap. And once we took that leap, the story presented itself in such a beautiful way, such a different way. A lot of the decisions, you spend a lot of time talking to people and you think it through as much as you can, but ultimately it comes down to what feels right. And the minute I allowed myself to let the Mummy be Ahmanet, it just felt right. And that's the best way for me to say it.
THE MUMMY will be released on June 9, 2017.