The Mummy is a 1999 American action-adventure film written and directed by Stephen Sommers and starring Brendan Fraser, Rachel Weisz, John Hannah, and Arnold Vosloo. A loose remake of the 1932 film The Mummy, Sommers' The Mummy follows the adventurer and treasure hunter Rick O'Connell (Fraser) as he travels to Hamunaptra, the City of the Dead, with librarian Evelyn Carnahan (Weisz) and her older brother Jonathan (Hannah), where they accidentally awaken Imhotep (Vosloo), a cursed high priest with supernatural powers.
Development took years, with multiple screenplays and directors attached. Sommers successfully pitched his version of a more adventurous and romantic take on the source material. Filming took place in Morocco and the United Kingdom; the crew endured dehydration, sandstorms and snakes shooting on location in the Sahara Desert. Industrial Light & Magic provided many of the visual effects, blending live-action footage and computer-generated imagery to create Imhotep, while Jerry Goldsmith composed the orchestral score.
The Mummy was theatrically released on May 7, 1999 by Universal Pictures. The film received mixed critical reviews but grossed $422.5 million worldwide against a production budget of $80 million, becoming the sixth-highest-grossing film of 1999. The film started a new franchise, with two direct sequels, The Mummy Returns in 2001 and The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor in 2008, and various spinoffs such as an animated series, which ran from 2001 to 2003, and the prequel The Scorpion King in 2002, which led to sequels of its own. In 2017, an attempt was made to start another Universal Monsters franchise with The Mummy.
Plot
In Thebes, Egypt, 1290 BC, Pharaoh Seti I discovers that his high priest Imhotep is having an affair with his mistress Anck-su-namun. The two kill Seti when he confronts them. Anck-su-namun takes her own life to buy Imhotep time to escape the Medjai, Pharaoh's bodyguards. Imhotep and his priests steal Anck-su-namun's corpse and travel to the city of Hamunaptra to resurrect her, but the Medjai intervene. As punishment, Imhotep's priests are mummified alive, while Imhotep is cursed and buried alive with flesh-eating scarabs. The Medjai are sworn to prevent Imhotep's return, as his resurrection would grant him immense power and immortality.
In 1926 AD Cairo, Kingdom of Egypt, Jonathan Carnahan presents his sister, Evelyn—a librarian and aspiring Egyptologist working for museum curator Dr. Terence Bey—with an intricate box and map that lead to Hamunaptra, the existence of which is now considered a myth. Jonathan reveals he stole the box from American adventurer and treasure hunter Rick O'Connell, who discovered the city while in the French Foreign Legion three years earlier. Evelyn bargains with a corrupt prison warden to free the incarcerated Rick so he can take them to Hamunaptra, where she hopes to find the golden Book of Amun-Ra.
The group finds themselves competing with an American expedition, guided by Rick's cowardly fellow former Legionnaire Beni Gabor. The Medjai ambush the expeditions, and their leader Ardeth Bay cautions them to leave. Ignoring the warnings, the two expeditions continue to dig through the ruins. The Americans find the Book of the Dead as well as five canopic jars, while Evelyn, Rick, and Jonathan accidentally discover Imhotep's mummified remains.
That night, Evelyn steals the Book of the Dead from the rival camp, accidentally awakening the mummified Imhotep when she reads the text contained within. Following a confrontation with Imhotep as well as the Medjai, the expeditions flee back to Cairo. Imhotep spares Beni's life to serve as a translator when he discovers that Beni can speak Hebrew.
Imhotep follows the expeditions back to Cairo and unleashes the biblical Plagues of Egypt. The Americans who discovered the Book of the Dead are hunted and killed by Imhotep, restoring his human form and strengthening his power. Attempting to find answers at the museum, Rick, Evelyn and Jonathan instead find Ardeth being hosted by Dr. Bey, revealed to be a fellow Medjai. The group surmises that Imhotep wants to resurrect Anck-su-namun using Evelyn as a human sacrifice, and that the only way to stop him is to return to Hamunaptra and find the Book of Amun-Ra. The group are soon cornered by Imhotep and a mind-controlled mob. Evelyn is captured while Dr. Bey sacrifices himself to allow the others to escape.
The remaining three convince Rick's old friend and pilot Winston Havelock to fly them to Hamunaptra. Imhotep conjures a magical sandstorm, crashing their plane and killing Winston. Reaching the city on foot, Rick and Jonathan find the Book of Amun-Ra, while Ardeth fights Imhotep's resurrected servants. Jonathan and Rick reach the ritual chamber, where Rick frees Evelyn, and Jonathan uses the book to control several guards, ordering them to kill a resurrected Anck-su-namun. Evelyn uses the book to make Imhotep mortal; Rick fatally stabs him, and Imhotep vows revenge as he decomposes back into a corpse.
Meanwhile, Beni, pilfering treasure from Hamunaptra, inadvertently triggers a booby-trap. Rick, Evelyn and Jonathan escape the collapsing city while Beni is buried inside and devoured by scarabs. Outside, the group discover Ardeth survived, and he bids them farewell as they depart, taking some of Beni's plundered loot with them.
Cast
Brendan Fraser as Rick O'Connell Rachel Weisz as Evelyn Carnahan John Hannah as Jonathan Carnahan Arnold Vosloo as Imhotep Kevin J. O'Connor as Beni Gabor Jonathan Hyde as Dr. Allen Chamberlain Oded Fehr as Ardeth Bay Erick Avari as Dr. Terence Bey Stephen Dunham as Isaac Henderson Corey Johnson as David Daniels Tuc Watkins as Bernard Burns Omid Djalili as Warden Gad Hassan Aharon Ipalé as Pharaoh Seti I Bernard Fox as Captain Winston Havelock Patricia Velásquez as Anck-su-namun Carl Chase as Hook, a one-handed member of the Medjai Mohammed Afifi as hangman Abderrahim El Aadili as camel guide
Production Development In the late 1980s, the producers James Jacks and Sean Daniel decided to update the 1932 horror film The Mummy for the modern era. Universal gave them the go-ahead, but only if they kept the budget around $10 million. Jacks remembers that the studio "essentially wanted a low-budget horror franchise". In 1987, George A. Romero wrote a film treatment, and was attached to direct. Screenwriter Abbie Bernstein recalled that Universal wanted an unstoppable Mummy akin to the Terminator. Bernstein's story took place in the present; scientists inadvertently bring a mummy to life, who wants to use an ancient device to destroy all life on earth. "[The Mummy] had no more social interaction than the Tyrannosaurus did in Jurassic Park," Bernstein recalled. Romero drifted away from the project and the script was abandoned.
Next, Jacks and Daniel recruited horror filmmaker/writer Clive Barker to direct after his success with Hellraiser (1987). Barker's 1990 treatment and a successive 1991 screenplay by Mick Garris were dark and violent with the story revolving around an art museum that rebuilds an entire Egyptian tomb in Beverly Hills. Jacks recalls that Barker's take was "dark, sexual and filled with mysticism", and that, "it would have been a great low-budget movie". Barker recalled the concept was too weird for the studio, and that his vision treated the Mummy as a jumping-off point for the film instead of the central character.
Alan Ormsby, unaware of previous efforts to launch the film, was brought on next. He pitched a more straightforward update to the 1932 film, again focusing on the Mummy as a relentless Terminator-like character. Joe Dante was attached as director, increasing the budget for his idea of Daniel Day-Lewis as a brooding Mummy. This version's draft was later re-written by John Sayles. It was set in contemporary times and focused on reincarnation with elements of a love story. It came close to being made—with some elements like the flesh-eating scarabs making it to the final product—but Universal balked at the higher price tag.
Romero returned to the project seven years later in 1994 with a vision of a zombie-style horror film similar to Night of the Living Dead (1968), but which also relied heavily upon elements of tragic romance and ambivalence of identity. Romero completed a draft in October 1994, co-written with Ormsby and Sayles, that revolved around a female archaeologist named Helen Grover and her discovery of the tomb of Imhotep, an Egyptian general who lived in the time of Ramesses II. Unfolding in a nameless American city in modern times, events are set into motion when Imhotep inadvertently awakens as a result of his body having been exposed to rays from an MRI scan in a high-tech forensic archaeology lab. Helen finds herself drawn into a tentative relationship with Imhotep while also experiencing clairvoyant flashbacks to a previous life in the Nineteenth Dynasty of Egypt as a priestess of Isis. Summoning mystical powers through incantation, Imhotep later resurrects the mummy of Karis, a loyal slave. Karis embarks on a vengeful rampage against the grave robbers of his tomb. Romero's script was considered too dark and violent by Jacks and the studio, who wanted a more accessible picture. Romero was unable to extricate himself from another contract he had in negotiation with MGM and so his involvement with the film was severed and the development of an entirely new script was commissioned.
Garris returned in 1995, developing a script that combined elements of the 1932 film and 1942's The Mummy's Tomb. This draft was a period piece awash in Egyptian art-inspired Art Deco, but the vision once again proved too expensive for the studio and was discarded for a modern setting. While the project came close to entering production, Universal was sold to Seagram. Sheinberg chose to produce The Mummy through his independent company and write a new script. Unable to find a suitable high-profile writer and director (Wes Craven was offered, but he turned it down) the project unraveled again and Garris left the project for the second time.
Still determined to create a new Mummy film, Universal hired Kevin Jarre in 1996 to write a new screenplay. According to Jacks, the executives were now convinced the film should be a larger-budget period piece. Stephen Sommers called Jacks and Daniel in 1997 with his vision of The Mummy "as a kind of Indiana Jones or Jason and the Argonauts with the mummy as the creature giving the hero a hard time". Sommers had seen the original film when he was eight and wanted to recreate the things he liked about it on a bigger scale. Discussing other classic horror characters, Sommers recalled that "Frankenstein made me sad—I always felt sorry for him. Dracula was kind of cool and sexy. But The Mummy just plain scared me." He had wanted to make a Mummy film, but other writers or directors were always attached.