The Super Mario Galaxy Movie and Project Hail Mary continued their respective runs atop the box office charts, but there’s always room for a little bit of horror in the mix. To that end, Warner Bros. unleashed Lee Cronin’s The Mummy in theaters over the weekend and, even though it didn’t challenge the aforementioned crowd-pleasers for the top spot, it absolutely found its audience.
See also: Here’s Why The Overlook Film Festival Restored My Faith In Humanity
Cronin’s radical, gory new take on The Mummy opened to an estimated $13.5 million domestically, which was good enough for third place behind Mario ($35 million) and Project Hail Mary ($20.4 million). Overseas, Cronin’s new monster movie added a bigger-than-expected $20.5 million for a $34 million global debut. Though not massive, that’s certainly enough to justify the movie’s very reasonable $22 million budget.
The movie (which appears on the newsstand cover of FANGORIA #31) centers on the young daughter of a journalist who disappears into the desert without a trace. Eight years later, the family is stunned when she unexpectedly returns under strange circumstances. What should be a joyful reunion becomes a living nightmare. The cast includes Jack Reynor, Laia Costa, May Calamawy, Natalie Grace, with Veronica Falcón. Cronin, who was coming off of the success of Evil Dead Rise, also wrote the screenplay.
Cronin’s The Mummy has been met with mixed reviews from critics. Fango’s Kimberly Leszak enjoyed what she called a “gory, giddy ride.” Audiences were also a bit mixed so we’ll have to see what happens in the coming weeks. The good thing though is that on a budget that size with outsized support from overseas markets, WB should pretty easily make its investment back, even if it’s not an outright, breakout hit. This big creative swing will easily pay off in the end.
Produced by the horror maestros over at Blumhouse, this is yet another example of trying to take an old monster IP and do something imaginative with it. The studio had a lot of success with Leigh Whannell’s The Invisible Man in 2020, which they tried to replicate with Wolf Man last year. That one didn’t quite pan out. In this case, it’s somewhere in the middle. Cronin's latest isn't a big hit, but it worked well enough. Well enough gets the job done.
Looking ahead, we’ve got another juggernaut entering the fold in the form of the Michael Jackson biopic Michael hitting theaters this upcoming weekend. Jorma Taccone’s comedic thriller Over Your Dead Body will serve as counterprogramming against it. May 1 brings with it Deep Water and Hokum for horror fans, before Mortal Kombat II truly gets the summer season started on May 8.
Lee Cronin’s The Mummy is in theaters now.
