There's always the chance that Universal's attempt to reboot The Mummy franchise could be a success, but right now it's sounding like a disaster. You might recall last year they hired Jon Spaihts, who at the time had a ton of fanfare after Prometheus, to pen the relaunch for producers Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci. Not a bad decision, really. Then they hired Len Wiseman, who had just bombed on the Total Recall remake, to direct. He's not that different from Stephen Sommers, so it made some sense. Their next decision, though, is something of a headscratcher.
Vulture reports that Billy Ray, in my opinion one of the best screenwriters in Hollywood, has been hired to pen a competing script, which is in hopes of getting production going this year. They really want to have the next film ready by 2014, and somebody thinks having more scripts to deal with is a good way to accomplishing that. More disturbing is what Vulture's source says about Universal's plan, which is to basically take parts of both scripts and piece them together like some horrible Frankenstein's monster....
"My suspicion is that one of them will be a ‘structure-and-body’ man, and one’s going to be a ‘character-and-dialogue’ man — and that they’ll then just gang-bang them together into one script, crediting both writers, because credit arbitration is usually a nightmare."
Ugh. Ray most recently wrote The Hunger Games, and has done some excellent work in the past. If you haven't seen the FBI thriller, Breach, you should make it a top priority. He also wrote and directed Shattered Glass, and has penned Paul Greengrass' upcoming Somali pirates film, Captain Phillips. So I have no doubt that Ray's draft will be strong, even if Universal finds a way to screw it up.
