Back in 2017, The Mummy was intended to kick off Universal’s “Dark Universe,” but when the film wasn’t as big of a hit as Universal had hoped, well, it wasn’t long before the entire “Dark Universe” was completely dismantled. Universal is on a much-improved path with their Universal Monsters at the moment, but the failure of the “Dark Universe” still stings for many.
Included in that group is The Mummy director Alex Kurtzman, who was of course one of the key creative figures for the “Dark Universe.” Reflecting five years after The Mummy failed to kick-start the team’s grand plans, Kurtzman calls it the biggest failure of his life.
“I tend to subscribe to the point of view that you learn nothing from your successes, and you learn everything from your failures. And that was probably the biggest failure of my life, both personally and professionally,” Kurtzman tells The Playlist. “There are about a million things I regret about it, but it also gave me so many gifts that are inexpressibly beautiful. I didn’t become a director until I made that movie, and it wasn’t because it was well directed – it was because it wasn’t.”
Kurtzman continues, “And as brutal as it was, in many ways, and as many cooks in the kitchen as there were, I am very grateful for the opportunity to make those mistakes because it rebuilt me into a tougher person and it also rebuilt me into a clearer filmmaker. And that has been a real gift and I feel those gifts all the time because I’m very clear now when I have a feeling that doesn’t feel right – I am not quiet about it anymore. I will literally not proceed when I feel that feeling. It’s not worth it to me. And you can’t get to that place of gratitude until you’ve had that kind of experience. Look, if you look at history and you look at people who’ve made amazing things, every single one of them will tell you the same story which is that it came after a failure, so I look back on it now with gratitude. It took me a while to get there, but my life is better for it.”
The Mummy scared up $409.2 million in theaters back in 2017, the bulk of that money made internationally. Alas, it just wasn’t enough to justify the big spending on subsequent “Dark Universe” installments, directly leading to the collapse of those plans. Leigh Whannell’s The Invisible Man, instead, helped paved a more profitable new road for the Universal Monsters.
A whole new world of gods and monsters is soon on the way.
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