Soon to hit the grimy streets of ’70s LA for Shane Black noir The Nice Guys, Russell Crowe has potentially teed up his next project: Universal’s starry reboot of The Mummy.
Reports from both Variety and The Hollywood Reporter caution that negotiations are at a very early stage – Tom Hardy and Javier Bardem had allegedly circled the part beforehand – though if said deal were to go through, Crowe would assume a Dr. Jekyll-esque role that could potentially seed a spinoff movie of its own, as Universal’s interconnected Monsters universe begins to take shape.
Currently filming in London – as recent set photos confirmed – Tom Cruise and Annabelle Wallis will topline Alex Kurtzman’s long-in-development reboot, with the former on board as a Navy seal. Expected to shift production to the Middle East soon, Universal’s overhauled version of The Mummy will see our adventurers go up against Sofia Boutella’s (Kingsman: The Secret Service, Star Trek Beyond) mystical being, with New Girl‘s Jake Johnson, Marwan Kenzari and Courtney B. Vance rounding out the core cast.
Set for launch in summer of 2017, Kurtzman and writing partner Chris Morgan will then oversee movies based on Dracula, Van Helsing, Bride of Frankenstein, the Wolfman and the Invisible Man, adhering to a one-film-per-year quota.
Next year, The Mummy will ignite Universal’s interconnected universe on June 9, 2017. It’ll be followed in quick succession by two as-yet-untitled creature features – that we know of – the first of which arriving on April 13, 2018 and, as we learned earlier today, February 15, 2019.