Movies
Jon Spaihts Says ‘The Mummy’ Will Have “Power to Terrify”
Writer Jon Spaihts is currently sitting on a very comfortable bed. His latest film Doctor Strange pretty much killed it at the box office this weekend and he’s got several projects ahead that are pretty much guaranteed to be big earners, such as Pacific Rim 2, Passengers, and Van Helsing. But it’s his work on The Mummy that has people interested as the last few iterations we’ve seen have been a bit more on the adventure side than horror.
Speaking with THR, Spaihts explains that he appreciates where those movies came from and how they presented themselves but that he has a different vision.
In ‘The Mummy’, I think we’re going to see the first Mummy film in the entire Universal canon with the true power to terrify. The earliest [Boris] Karloff and Bela Lugosi Mummy movies were scary in a small way, perhaps a dated way. They were almost parlor movies. Subsequent movies have been more swashbuckling. This one is going to have all of that action and adventure, but a legitimate power to terrify. I think that’s going to be the new experience of that film.
Related: ‘Van Helsing’ Screenwriter Talks the Tone of the New Film
As mentioned above, Spaihts is also working on the script for Van Helsing, which will be one of the films in the Universal Monsters Cinematic Universe, a franchise venture from the studio that will use the classic monster films as a basis for a Avengers-esque series of films. The studio is investing a lot of money and talent into these films, so it’ll be interesting to see how they play out!
The studio is launching its monsters universe, a series of interconnected monster films based on its vault of classic movies, with The Mummy, starring Tom Cruise and Russell Crowe. Directed by Alex Kurtzman, it is set to hit theaters June 9th, 2017. Dracula, Frankenstein, The Wolf Man, The Invisible Man and Bride of Frankenstein are among the classic creatures that will be included in the new universe, overseen by Kurtzman (Star Trek) and Chris Morgan (Fast & Furious).
Two things that have proven to be pretty dependable at the box office in recent years are horror movies and Christopher Nolan movies. With Nolan’s The Odyssey absolutely dominating the box office this past weekend, many fans of Nolan’s work have been left hungry for a Nolan-directed horror movie. After all, The Odyssey does whet the appetite for Nolan nightmare fuel.
Christopher Nolan has brushed up against the horror genre in the past with 2002 thriller Insomnia, but does he have any interest in someday making a full-on horror movie?
Nolan tells the Empire Podcast in a new chat, “I’ve always been interested in doing a horror film.”
“But horror is most successful when the conceptual framework of whatever the story is is just so undeniable. I think there are very few really great horror movies,” Nolan continues.
So why hasn’t Christopher Nolan directed a horror movie yet?
He explains to Empire, “I’ve never clicked with a particular idea or concept that worked for me. I love the genre. Of all genres, it’s the most visceral. Where the direct response to the audience is the most important. That is to say, you’re trying to make people literally feel something in their bones about what’s going on on-screen.”
Nolan calls horror “a genre in which experimentation is demanded.” He explains, “I go to see a lot of horror films with my kids these days, and you’ll see things in the first half an hour, 45 minutes of any horror film that you’d never see in another genre. Risks that are taken. Dangerous approaches to things. Admittedly, a lot of movies can’t sustain that to the end. But in the horror genre, that kind of innovation is not just respected – it’s really demanded.”
Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey is now playing in theaters.
Cillian Murphy as Scarecrow in Christopher Nolan’s ‘The Dark Knight’ (2008)
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