The Mummy reboot villain was changed from male to female due to X-Men: Days of Future Past

The Mummy reboot starring Tom Cruise has a pretty interesting story surrounding its central character. According to director Alex Kurtzman, the villain was set to be a male character just as the original Brendan Fraser films. After seeing X-Men: Apocalypse, however, that all changed.

At the end of X-Men: Days of Future Past, we see a credits scene with a young Apocalypse, who of course shows up in the following film. The design of that character, as played by Oscar Isaac, was apparently the exact same design as Kurtzman's Mummy villain. Kurtzman told Cinema Blend in an interview that

I was going down that road, and then I saw the end of Days of Future Past. And they had the character that Oscar Isaac wound up playing as a boy, and it was, I kid you not, the exact same design. And I was like, ‘Oh, man! That is not good!’ And actually it was the catalyst, it was the moment of, ‘Okay, not only is this not going to be different enough, Bryan Singer just did it, I definitely don’t want to go down that road.’

Kurtzman said that the decision actually helped in the development process because "In a way, it was very helpful to me because it made me take that leap. And once we took that leap, the story presented itself in such a beautiful way, such a different way"

The new Mummy film starring Tom Cruise sees him raise the Mummy Ahmanet "from the dead", and of course she wants to destroy the Earth. It's a total remake of the film and is also set to start Universal's cinematic universe. It's not too often you see a total remake of a character in the development stage of a film, and these circumstances are in fact pretty funny.

The Mummy is set to release this Summer, June 9th

[Cinemablend]