Author: Aaron Couch / Source: The Hollywood Reporter

The first trailer for The Mummy is pitting Tom Cruise against a 5,000-year-old threat.

Last week, Heat Vision was in attendance as director Alex Kurtzman showed off the trailer and extra footage to a small group of reporters, and revealed details of Universal’s planned shared universe featuring its monsters (Javier Bardem is on board for a future Frankenstein film, while Johnny Depp has signed on for The Invisible Man).

A shared universe is among the hottest — and trickiest — propositions for a Hollywood studio. Marvel has done it to great acclaim, and DC earned hundreds of millions at the box office this year following suit. But there’s also been plenty of faltering too. Sony’s The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (2014) was criticized for spending so much time setting up follow-ups (such as the villain team-up Sinister Six) that it lost sight of making a great film.

Kurtzman said that making a great movie first is the key.

“It’s not so much building a universe. It’s ‘Make a great Mummy movie.’ Now, if in the context of making a great Mummy movie, you can plant the seeds for something else, fantastic,” said Kurtzman. “But the only way you can get there, is if those seeds can be planted organically and if can be part of The Mummy story, first and foremost.”

Here’s more tidbits Kurtzman dropped.

There may be never be an Avengers with monsters…

“There has to be some kind of unifying reason if you’re going to do something like that. By the way, maybe they don’t come together in one movie….

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