Whether you loved or hated Lee Cronin’s The Mummy—or found it fun but forgettable, as we did—there’s no denying it displays some pretty obvious influences. That includes, of course, mummy movies of the past (as well as possession movies), but stylistically it’s very much in the vein of films made by its producers, Blumhouse and Atomic Monster.
That includes the many works of James Wan, who never met a creepy kid or gory flourish he didn’t love. So it’s wild to imagine that Wan would be seen storming out of a test screening of his company’s big spring release—and as it turns out, that’s not quite the right description for what actually happened.
Speaking to the Hollywood Reporter, Cronin himself cleared up the test-screening gossip.
“There was a claim that [producer] James Wan walked out of a test screening [in disgust],” Cronin told THR. “No, he needed to go to the bathroom. It was also the third time he’d seen the movie at that point. So it’s much easier for people to make noise about things that are mistruths because the truth isn’t that interesting. James Wan wanting more Milk Duds doesn’t get anybody going.”
The trade also pressed Cronin, who previously made Evil Dead Rise, about having his name in the title of his new film. He said that when he wrote the script, he had called it simply The Mummy. The suggestion to make it Lee Cronin’s The Mummy came after producer Jason Blum and others had read it. It was presented to the filmmaker as a way to make his take on the material stand out; there is that other Mummy franchise, after all.
“When it was proposed to me, the ego didn’t go, ‘Yeah, rock on! Let’s do this,'” Cronin admitted. “I was like, ‘You’re going to have to give me the weekend to think about it.’ But in the end, it felt like the right way to own The Mummy title. That was the point. I didn’t—in any way, shape, or form—say yes, thinking, ‘Yeah, this is because I’m a household name.’ Far from it. It allowed the film to have its own identity, and it was really important to me that the film could have its own identity.”
Lee Cronin’s The Mummy is in theaters now.
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