Before Lee Cronin’s The Mummy opened in theaters, it had already survived a months-long campaign of online misinformation. Now, with the film in wide release, director Lee Cronin is setting the record straight — and revealing the ending audiences almost got instead.
The Irish filmmaker, who came off Evil Dead Rise as the highest-grossing entry in Sam Raimi’s horror franchise, says a widely-circulated claim that producer James Wan walked out of a test screening in disgust was simply false. “No, he needed to go to the bathroom,” Cronin said. “It was also the third time he’d seen the movie at that point. So it’s much easier for people to make noise about things that are mistruths because the truth isn’t that interesting. James Wan wanting more Milk Duds doesn’t get anybody going.”
The rumor had originated from online horror sites in January, citing anonymous test screening reports that described the film as catastrophically bad. A separate claim that the film had been retitled The Resurrected also spread widely, though Cronin later explained that “Resurrected” was simply a production code word used to keep the project under wraps — a common industry practice.
The film, produced by Jason Blum’s Blumhouse and Wan’s Atomic Monster, stars Jack Reynor and Laia Costa in a story about a family whose young daughter disappears into the Egyptian desert and reappears eight years later, transformed into something horrifying. The possessory title — rare in studio filmmaking — was Blum’s idea, a way to signal Cronin’s authorship and avoid confusion with prior franchise entries dating to 1932.
The film’s origins carry personal weight Cronin has been open about. His mother died the same day he finished Evil Dead Rise, before she could watch the film. Working on The Mummy became a way to process that grief, with a specific scene — inspired by a phone call he had to make about his mother’s false teeth during her wake — making it directly into the movie.
The film opened to $13.5 million domestically from 3,404 locations, landing in third place behind The Super Mario Galaxy Movie and Project Hail Mary. It earned a C+ CinemaScore and a 45% Rotten Tomatoes score, with critics citing a padded running time. Against its reported $22 million net production budget and with $20.5 million from international markets, the worldwide total reached $34 million in its opening frame.
