Sofia Boutella plays Princess Ahmanet/The Mummy in the 2017 'The Mummy' reboot. (Photo : YouTube/Universal Pictures)
As we inch closer to the world premiere of Tom Cruise's "The Mummy" reboot, director Alex Kurtzman and actress Sofia Boutella revealed more details about the film's ancient villain, Princes Ahmanet.
"The Mummy" reboot gives a fresh take to the original "The Mummy" movie from Universal Pictures. For one, the lead character, Nick Morton (Cruise), dies in a plane crash and wakes up in a morgue inside a body bag. This is also the first time the title character is female.
The latest interview of EW shed some light on Princess Ahmanet's backstory. When Ahmanet's father sired a son, he turned back on his promise to make her pharaoh. This betrayal forced her to turn to darkness and unleash terror in the world.
Boutella, who starred in "Kingsman: The Secret Service," revealed that she researched on Egyptian myth in order to give her character an air of royalty. "These people never shouted," she said. "They were the most powerful people, but they were just calm."
The film will also introduce Russell Crowe as Dr. Henry Jekyll, as Universal preps for its much awaited monster movie universe (it's sort of like the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but with monsters).
"The Mummy," however, will not deal with the stories in the other monster movies. The goal of the film is to build up an intense and scary Mummy whom Kurtzman described as "a woman who wasn't content to be put in her place and wanted something more."
Meanwhile, "The Mummy" reboot is said to be more explosive than the action-packed "The Mummy" movie in 1999, which starred Brandon Fraser, Rachel Weis and Arnold Vosloo as the Mummy. In most of his movies, Cruise always saves the day, but saving the day will be trickier for his character in "The Mummy" reboot.
"The first thing I said to Tom [Cruise] was, 'It'll be scarier if we can take away the fundamental knowledge that you're gonna solve the problem," Kurtzman hinted about the conflict in the story.
Kurtzman also told EW that "The Mummy" will feature two origin stories that will still connect it with the other films in Universal's monster movie universe.
