Imhotep isn’t the only thing rising from the sands. Production on Lee Cronin’s The Mummy film is pressing forward, with three new cast members confirmed by Deadline to join the horror revival backed by Atomic Monster, Blumhouse, and New Line Cinema. Among them is Moon Knight breakout May Calamawy, whose performance as Layla El-Faouly in the Marvel miniseries earned widespread recognition.
She is joined by veteran actress Veronica Falcón and Egyptian star May Elghety, rounding out a cast that continues to take shape as filming rolls on in Ireland and Spain. Falcón, no stranger to genre filmmaking, brings prior Blumhouse experience from her work in Imaginary and The Forever Purge, while Elghety adds international appeal following her appearance in Disney+’s Kizazi Moto: Generation Fire. Details of their roles remain tightly under wraps.
Jack Reynor leads the cast as a husband who, alongside his wife (played by The Wheel of Time star Laia Costa) encounters supernatural forces with deadly consequences. Early reports suggest a dark and intimate horror story, far removed from the swashbuckling tones of previous iterations.
That tone wouldn’t be unfamiliar to Cronin fans. His 2023 entry in the Evil Dead franchise, Evil Dead Rise, embraced claustrophobic settings and gruesome set pieces to great effect, earning both critical praise and US$147 million at the box office. His ability to reinvigorate an existing horror IP now appears to be the foundation for another potential franchise, should this take on The Mummy land with audiences.
Though Universal’s 2017 reboot starring Tom Cruise attempted to launch a shared Dark Universe, lacklustre reception and poor box office returns left that vision dead on arrival. Cronin’s reboot is entirely unrelated, now under the purview of Warner Bros. Discovery, which seems intent on reviving monster cinema through a more contained and horror-driven lens.
Production is being shepherded by producers James Wan, Jason Blum, and John Keville. For now, fans of horror, mythology, and reanimated corpses will have to wait a little longer to see exactly what horrors Cronin has unearthed.