Despite this summer's dull and tedious Total Recall remake mostly crapping the bed here in the States, the film actually did pretty well overseas. The $170M worldwide total is indicative of the trend when it comes to Len Wiseman-directed flicks. They tend to do average business here, while scoring big on the foreign market where they love to watch mediocre American action movies. Wiseman's Underworld franchise fits into that category as well. But the fact remains he does make money, and Universal must be happy with him, because they've picked him to lead their reboot of The Mummy.
It was earlier this year we learned of the studio's plan to reboot the classic movie monster, with Transformers duo Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci producing. Jon Spaihts(Prometheus) would be writing the script, and the trio seemed to indicate Universal's plan to really move the ball forward with a fresh approach. The hiring of Wiseman sorta contradicts that, as he's not exactly a director I see as being especially creative.
There is some recent history between Orci, Kurtzman, and Wiseman as they're teaming up on a Sleepy Hollow pilot, so I'm sure that figured into the decision. Still, this blunts my excitement a thousand fold. Hopefully they'll make a smarter choice with their Van Helsing relaunch which has Tom Cruise attached. [Deadline]
