Universal Plans to Bring 'The Mummy' Back From the Dead

Franchises are what every Hollywood studio desperately craves: a reliable series of films with entries that can be churned out regularly with virtually guaranteed profitability. Lately, comic books and teen novels have been dominating the franchise landscape, leaving a few studios that didn't get the jump on hot properties in the dust.

Universal is one such studio, but it is not just going to sit idle. Variety reports the studio plans to reboot "The Mummy," lining up a screenwriter to take on the project.

The horror franchise originally dates back to the heyday of Universal monster movies. The first film starred Boris Karloff as the titular monster, an ancient Egyptian risen from the dead. The film was remade several times but most memorably in 1999, when director Stephen Sommers created an action franchise out of the property starring Brendan Fraser.

The franchise 1999's "The Mummy" created resulted in three official entries, as well as "The Scorpion King" spinoff and its direct-to-video prequel. The series never really dropped off in popularity. While it's true that "The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor" was not well-received critically, it pulled in nearly as much worldwide box office revenue as the first two installments. This makes the Universal's decision to reboot the franchise rather than continue it somewhat puzzling.

The screenwriter hired by the studio is Jon Spaihts, one of the writers behind this year's upcoming "Prometheus." In fact, according to Variety, Spaihts thinks the new "Mummy" represents a similar opportunity to the Ridley Scott sci-fi project. Given that "Prometheus" is a somewhat indirect prequel to the "Alien" franchise, this begs the question whether the new version of the "The Mummy" is a true reboot or just a redirection of the franchise.

Spaihts comparing the project to "Prometheus" may mean this reboot will still tie into the existing films in some way, rather than start completely over from scratch. Then again, it could just be a screenwriter trying to ride the coattails of a likely successful film as far as they will take him. Until there's an actual draft of the script, it'll be hard to tell which is the case.