Dark Universe got under way. The objective was to eventually combine all the classic Universal monsters in one multi-movie narrative, unfortunately The Mummy crashed and burned from the get go talking the DU with it. Let's hear from a few industry insiders before giving our own five cents worth.

Brendan Fraser has recently added his take, “With the exception of three, the thing with all of these films is that, at least it was fun, it was a thrill ride, and you wanted to do it again.“. So for Brendan it was the fun factor, I would add his charismatic performance that defined the adventurer after a profit. And hey the third movie The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, while not as good as the first two was still worth your time watching.

Stephen Sommers, who helmed the first two Mummy movies in the Brendan Fraser series, has stated he isn't a fan of the reboot, in fact he was insulted when they never contacted him about it, “I was kind of insulted because the writers and director of that Tom Cruise one, no one ever contacted me”. So no attempt to even get some advice from Sommers who had directed two hughly successful Mummy movies.

Guess what kids, we are getting yet another Mummy movie with Evil Dead Rise director Lee Cronin having wrapped production on the latest version. As would be expected from the director, “I’m digging deep into the earth to raise something very ancient and very frightening.”. Color me excited, the movie is apparently scheduled to drop 17th April 2026.

Before concluding lets break down the figures to see how Tom Cruise's Mummy actually did. On a reported budget of $175 the movie took Internationally $330 and North America $80 million. So the Studio would have realised $40 million domestic and $110 Internationally for a total income of approx. $150 million. While calculating box office results is a dark art the rule of thumb is the Studio will take 50% of North American earnings and a third of International receipts. Advertising and other costs are sort of taken care of by the calculation, as opposed to some people who try to add those costs to the production costs. So end of day Tom Cruise's The Mummy was a loss making venture for Universal and pretty much put an end to the Dark Universe. Considering the next movie in the series was reported to be The Bride of Frankenstein, bit of a misnomer there, Frankenstein is the Doctor not the monster, the Universe was going to be dead in the water anyways. What were Universal thinking!

So our five cents worth. Reportedly Tom Cruise went the full Zegler and demanded changes galore to the movie, which eventually lead to The Mummy being a Tom Cruise vanity project rather than a horror movie. A tougher Director would have told Cruise to take his hand off it, but it wasn't the case in this movie leading to a disjointed mess that really didn't satisfy anyone. So yes our anaylsis is Timmy Cruise destroyed an entire franchise because of ego.