The first official trailer for the new 'The Mummy' movie dropped last week and officially kicked off the new monster universe. This monster universe from Universal Studios will put a bunch of monsters in the same universe and basically set up an environment similar to the Marvel Universe.
In Marvel, we see the superheroes get their own standalone films then a movie with everyone fighting the bad guys together. The monster universe is aiming for the same thing, but the question remains as to who the team of good guys will be… cause we already know the bad guys (unless… it's some kind of suicide squad of monsters).
GamesRadar sat down with The Mummy director Alex Kurtzmen and set the record straight on shared universe movies. The fact of the matter is that while the Marvel Cinematic Universe relies on this tactic, it's the monster universe that started it.
"Actually, if you go back to the origins of a shared universe, the monsters were the first to do it. It started with Frankenstein Meets Wolfman.
"That happened because they had done all these Frankenstein movies, and they had sort of run out of steam and said, ‘What are we going to do now?’ They had done all these Wolfman movies, and they were running out of steam. They said, ‘What are we going to do now?’ And they said, ‘Wait! We should just put these two characters together.’And from that, the first shared universe was born. It started not only cross-pollinating the monsters into each other’s movies, but then there was Abbott and Costello Meets Frankenstein and Abbott and Costello Meets the Mummy. That was the first true shared universe."
"I have a huge respect for the Marvel universe, and I think they’ve done pretty much everything right. But they follow the same rules that the monsters followed when the monsters started, which was; great individual stories – and if that works, then we can bring everybody together. That’s something I’m excited for, as opposed to something I feel like you’re trying to hand me – to build a universe, just so I can see more movies. That’s how I react to those things. Like I said – unbelievable respect for the Marvel guys; I think they’re brilliant – but they were not the first ones to do it."
Directed by Alex Kurtzman and starring Tom Cruise, Sofia Boutella, Russell Crowe, Annabelle Wallis, Jake Johnson, and Courtney B. Vance, The Mummy hits US and UK cinemas on June 9, 2017.
