First Trailer For Lee Cronin’s The Mummy Is Unwrapped

First things first: even though the Mummy is a classic Universal Studios monster, mummies have been a public domain concept since ancient Egypt and anyone can make a movie about a mummy. Warner Bros titled their upcoming horror feature Lee Cronin’s The Mummy, including the director’s name, so no one would confuse it with that other Mummy franchise. But…ah, people are doing it, including journalists. THIS IS NOT A UNIVERSAL MOVIE. It is a Warner Bros movie, got that?

Universal’s next effort, which will happily involve the return of Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz as Rick and Evie O’Connell, is aiming for a much broader audience than Lee Cronin’s The Mummy, which stars Jack Reynor and Laia Costa. Their daughter Katie, played by Natalie Grace, has been missing for some time…years, in fact. When she returns the same age, that’s certainly unusual…but far from the most noticeable change to her. You see, she spent that time mummified somewhere, and that experience has transformed her somewhat. She’s creepier, she’s slimier, and she makes nasty noises.

And as they learn, there might be 56 others out there just like her. Dealing with just one looks like trouble by itself. The clips imply New Katie is dangerous enough to have to be chained in the basement. As Laia’s character begs her daughter throughout the trailer to “say something,” she eventually gets a raspy-voiced statement from Katie, but not the one she wants. “Don’t worry, Mama, it’s fun to be dead.” If you say so.

With all the gross skin ripping and bug eating this trailer has (don’t watch it before eating), it’d be hard to confuse Universal’s more family-friendly take on the concept with this one. But Universal HAS produced some twisted takes on their monsters: “Abigail” was technically a Dracula movie and Leigh Whannell’s “The Invisible Man” reimagined the story as a stalker nightmare. From the recent past, I guess confusing the two is understandable. But now that you know the truth, don’t do it.

Produced by James Wan for Blumhouse, Lee Cronin’s The Mummy will be released in theaters on April 17.