The classic Universal monsters, The Mummy, The Wolfman etc., are staples of the horror genre. Recently, Universal made it known that they were, almost 100 years after the original movies, rebooting the universe of the monsters in a series of films. Eyebrows were raised as to the validity of this new wave of Universal monster movies as reboots don’t generally land in quite the same way as the things they’re rebooting, not to mention that it feels like they were jumping on the current “cinematic universe” trend in major movies.
However, at the Television Critics Association Press Tour for CBS series Limitless, Alex Kurtzman, the director of The Mummy coming 2017, which will kick off the reboot, reassured reporters that there will be horror in these movies.
“Yeah, I think it’s a fair response and it’s actually not — I think there was some lost in translation quality to the way it was received, because I promise you there will be horror in these movies. It is our life goal to make a horror movie. The tricky part is actually how you combine horror with either adventure or suspense or action and be true to all the genres together. In some way, Mummy, dating all the way back to the Karloff movie, was the first to do that. It was the first to combine horror with — I wouldn’t say action, but certainly a lot of suspense. So it’s more about how you blend the different elements and stay true to each one, but there will definitely be horror in the monster movies…We will hopefully serve it up good and plenty.”
So, at least they’re confident these films will be in the spirit of their fore-fathers. We can only hope!
