The director behind Evil Dead Rise gives a classic monster a new reimagining with Lee Cronin’s The Mummy.
In the film releasing in theaters on April 17, a journalist’s young daughter disappears into the desert without a trace. Eight years later, the broken family is shocked when she is returned to them. But their joyful reunion quickly devolves into a living nightmare.
Writer/Director Lee Cronin gives a whole new spin on a classic monster, the Mummy, with a visceral possession story.
Bloody Disgusting spoke with the director and producer James Wan ahead of the film’s release about the new monster design and mythology behind the complete reinvention.
Redesigning a Classic Monster
A scene from New Line Cinema, Atomic Monster and Blumhouse’s LEE CRONIN’S THE MUMMY. A Warner Bros. Pictures Release.
“I think one of the things myself and James talked about early on was that, first of all, it had to be practical,” Cronin says of his Mummy’s look. “We’re both big fans of that, and that we would create a look and a silhouette and a presentation of something that was different to reflect that the movie is a very different kind of Mummy story. Then I always try to find the answers within the story as well because it’s a monster that we take out of a box, but it’s not all the way there yet. It’s still warming up, it’s still stretching its legs.”
Cronin says of the Mummy’s evolution within the film, “I always describe it as it’s been on a really long economy class flight, and it ain’t going to do cartwheels right away. Within that, part of the design was also how it would look to be concealed from the light. So it’s a lot paler to begin. But then, when it’s brought out of that, maybe it looks like she’s getting color back in her face, but little do we know that that’s actually the beginning of a deeper rot and a bigger change that’s going on. So it was something with layers and something we could take on a journey. That was the key to the design.”
The new design was a huge part of the appeal for Wan. He says, “It was a big aspiration for us to want to do something that was different. There’ve been so many versions of The Mummy story over the years, and trying to find a new approach was very important for us to set us apart from all the others.”
It wasn’t just the design, either, Wan explains: “The aspiration to want to do something unique, but placed it within the sandbox of the Mummy sort of lore and mythology. But within that, how do we find something that we haven’t quite seen before? Myself and my team at Atomic Monster just immediately gravitated to his concept, his approach, and what he wanted to do with it. That was what really kind of, I think, what we needed to make a movie like this today that sets it apart. That was very important.”
An Evil Dead Rise reunion
BILLIE ROY as Maud Cannon in New Line Cinema’s, Atomic Monster’s and Blumhouse’s “LEE CRONIN’S THE MUMMY.” A Warner Bros. Pictures Release.
Lee Cronin’s The Mummy reunites the director with Evil Dead Rise cinematographer Dave Garbett, production designer Nick Bassett, editor Bryan Shaw, and composer Stephen McKeon. For eagle-eyed viewers, it also reunites Cronin with his Evil Dead Rise heroine, Lily Sullivan, in an almost unrecognizable, blink-and-you ‘ll-miss-it cameo.
It’s another example of Cronin’s sense of humor, despite his film’s visceral horror.
Cronin says of Sullivan’s cameo, “There was no obvious role for Lily in this movie. She came to me and said, ‘But I have to be in everything.‘ And I’m like, ‘Hey, I’m down with that, but I’m going to do something nasty in terms of just like how I make you look and what we’re going to do. She’s a beautiful woman, and I’m going to break all of that, and I’m going to call you a really, really bad name as well. No, actually, I’m not going to call you a really, really bad name. A nine-year-old kid is going to call you a really, really bad name.‘”
A new “Dark Universe” in the works?
MAY CALAMAWY as detective Dalia Zaki in New Line Cinema’s, Atomic Monster’s and Blumhouse’s “LEE CRONIN’S THE MUMMY.” A Warner Bros. Pictures Release.
Lee Cronin’s The Mummy joins Blumhouse’s growing series of Universal Classic Monster reinventions that began with The Invisible Man and continued in last year’s Wolf Man. Considering that horror master James Wan was reported two years ago to be attached to a new Creature from the Black Lagoon update, do Blumhouse and Atomic Monster have much larger plans for their own “Dark Universe“?
Wan remained mum on any Creature updates, but did hint at more to come.
“I mean, we’re all big fans of the classic Universal monsters, right? They’ve definitely penetrated pop culture in such a big way that they’ve gone on to become their own things, right? Away from the Universal initial umbrella,” Wan answers. “So yeah, there are many characters and a lot of them are really sort of public domain characters that we can kind of play in and play in the sandbox with.“
“There are other great characters within that world that we would obviously love to sort of dabble in, but we’ll see.”
(L-r) NATALIE GRACE as Katie and VERONICA FALCON as Carmen in New Line Cinema’s, Atomic Monster’s and Blumhouse’s “LEE CRONIN’S THE MUMMY.” A Warner Bros. Pictures Release.
The post How Director Lee Cronin and Producer James Wan Update a Classic Monster in ‘Lee Cronin’s The Mummy’ [Interview] appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.