Revealed: Brendan Fraser—Not Tom Cruise—Was Always Top Pick for ‘The Mummy,’ Director Says
Photo Illustration by Thomas Levinson/The Daily Beast/Getty/UniversalFilmmaker Stephen Sommers always wanted to make a mummy movie. The problem was, he didn’t know if anyone actually wanted to see it.“I was really nervous,” Sommers tells The Daily Beast ahead of this month’s 25th anniversary of his surprise '90s hit The Mummy. “I was in post-production and thought, ‘Oh crap, I’ve made a mummy movie.’ I loved the genre… the action, adventure, romance and horror, and I loved the original Mummy movies too but for 40 years, they’d made fun of mummies. You can unwrap them, outrun them, use them as Christmas wrapping… I suddenly thought, ‘Oh my God. Just because I love mummy movies, maybe other people won't.”Thankfully, he had little to worry about. Released on May 7 1999, Sommers’ take on The Mummy was a sweeping adventure harkening back to the swashbuckling stories of old Hollywood. Mixing sand-set excitement, witty humor, an unlikely dose of romance and some then-groundbreaking CGI effects, his film not only made worldwide stars of Brendan Fraser, Rachel Weisz, and John Hannah but became one of the highest-grossing movies of the year, spawning a new franchise and changing the way Hollywood’s summer tentpoles were released.Read more at The Daily Beast.
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