The Mummy Gets New Director?

Earlier this summer, Len Wiseman dropped out of the upcoming reboot of Universal's "The Mummy" franchise, but now a new director is set to take up the helm, at least according to The Hollywood Reporter.

Andres Muschietti is apparently in advanced stages of negotionations to oversee the monster movie. You may recognise Muschietti as the man responsible for this year's Mama.

Mama was a surprise hit - both in terms of box-office, where it took a very respectable $146 million worldwide, and in terms of quality, proving to be a surprisingly effective, moving and haunting gothic fairytale, complete with a tragic and sympathetic "monster" (perhaps the reason for asking Muschietti to tackle Imhotep) and a very distinctive visual style.

The film starred Jessica Chastain, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, and Nightmares

The 1932 classic was previously rebooted in 1999 by Universal with Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz taking the lead, in a series that provided two very enjoyable movies (there were more than two in the franchise, but that's beside the point), but this latest reboot will buck the trend by being set in the present day. No casting announcements have been made as yet, so don't expect to see the film - scripted by original Prometheus scribe Jon Spaihts - to make its original Summer 2014 release date.


And as a matter of pure speculation, with Marvel and now DC jumping on board the "cinematic universe" trend, would it be too much to ask for a shared Universal Monsters universe?