Lee Cronin’s The Mummy horror is excessively gory.

Cronin made his debut with the unsettling The Hole in the Ground, and brought one of horror’s franchises its biggest box office to with Evil Dead Rise ($147 million worldwide).

Cronin’s third feature bears his name in the title. It was an idea pitched by exec Jason Blum, who produces for Blumhouse alongside James Wan for Atomic Monster (and Cronin’s longtime producer John Keville for their new banner Wicked/Good).

Obviously, I know James by his work. So you’re always flattered when people just want to have a conversation. But what’s great as well is that I write and direct, and I build stuff up from the ground myself. So it wasn’t like, here’s a script for a Mummy film.

Jason Blum 

They had partnered up at that point. And then, through conversations and what Jason thought the title of the movie should be, with my name, and my relationship with Warner and the great people at New Line, we had this powerful combination. The joy for me was that it was greenlit very quickly. But then there was the horror, in the positive way, “Oh my God, we’ve got a release date. We need to just get started.

Blumhouse’s deal with Universal?

Universal have got their own ‘Mummy’ franchise, and they’re going to bring out a new movie. They’re great movies, but more action-adventures. This was very distinctly a horror. New Line felt like the right fit, and I’ve got first look deal there,

Links to Other Horror Pictures

I get a real kick when people feel connectivity to the things that have essentially polluted my mind. ‘The Exorcist’ is interesting, because I understand there are possession elements to this story. But what I’ve come to realize when people talk about ‘The Exorcist,’ it’s also the patience that’s in the movie. But I didn’t watch a single ‘Mummy’ movie until after I’d written my script and I went back and watch a Boris Karloff film. There wasn’t any major influence from those particular places, apart from great respect and reverence.

The two movies I kept going back to and thinking about, were Seven and ‘Poltergeist.’ Poltergeist is a story about a missing kid, and a missing kid who, even when she’s brought home, the parents are still in doubt about what it is that lays in front of them. And it’s interesting when people talk about this movie and ‘Evil Dead’ and I’m like, well, that’s no surprise, because I also made an ‘Evil Dead’ movie in my terms and my way with my voice.

It is definitely an R-rated movie and that is actually very possible.

Jason’s idea to call it Lee Cronin’s The Mummy.

They’d read the script and everybody knew what it was and just said, ‘This movie has your fingerprints and DNA all over it. Why do you reckon if we did this?’ And honestly, I was flattered, but I was also unsure. And I was like, you’re gonna have to give me the weekend to think about it. As always, I just talked to the people that I trust and the people that I trust were like, ‘We know how you like to author your movies. Your fingerprints are on every single corner, so why not?’ If someone as smart as Jason thinks it’s a good idea and he’s backing you, then you roll with it. I just see this flattering more than anything. But it is a cool way of separating this movie from what’s come before.

We wanted to create a distinct identity and not create confusion. And I hope when people watch the movie, they will just enjoy it for its freshness.

Name credited in the film’s title

It certainly won’t be on everything from here on! My producer, John Keville, jokes about it and if I sit down, he’ll go, ‘Oh look, it’s Lee Cronin’s chair.’ But I think it was right for this movie, even from the business point of view. In the great marketing team at Warner, there’s a fantastic person there called Susie Shen who cuts the trailers. I remember speaking to her and about the title, and she said, ‘But this is what’s great — we get to play with people’s expectations. There’s nothing more valuable than being able to do that.’

Brendan Fraser in the next Mummy Movie

I think there were some noises about it when we were in production, but it hadn’t been greenlit. It is now. But I always knew, even if they weren’t making another one, generationally there’d be a lot of people that would point back to that film in some way, shape or form. That’s okay, because everybody has their cultural references and looks for shortcut in the comprehension of what something might be. Brendan Fraser’s an awesome actor, and Radio Silence, the guys directing the movie, are wonderful people. So as somebody that has now fed into Mummy lore in the wider world of cinema, I’m looking forward to seeing what they do.

That would always exist a little bit. It’s interesting with movies, because there’s various code words for films, and at one point, the internet found one of the code words we were using — Resurrected — and decided our film had been retitled. There’s always internet noise, which is fine and part and parcel of making a movie. There was also funny rumor that James Wan was so disgusted by the movie that he walked out of a screening and went to the bathroom! It was also the third time he’d seen the movie, and he came back in. I’d rather have people talking about the thing you’re making than not.

Fraser is not in Lee Cronin’s The Mummy

It really caught fire, it’s important to be playful. As we got closer to finishing, I said to everybody involved that we should all be incredibly proud of what we’ve achieved, so let’s pump out our chests and own it. We’ve made something that is unique, and that will be clear when people engage with the film. We should be just really proud and really confident in what we’ve put out into the world.

Plans for sequels?

I’m gonna repeat the best advice I was ever given, by people that know how to make movie franchises work, which is the brilliant execs over at New Line, Rich Brener and Dave Neustadter, and they always say: we let the audience decide. I’m very audience focused. I absolutely adore the characters in this world, and we’ve dipped our toes into a much, much bigger lore. And if the audience really like this universe, then there’s no doubt there would be conversations about how we would continue to grow it. And as the originator and creator, I’d want to be pretty involved with that. There are great opportunities, because this movie is on a timeline. It’s about a family in the here and now in Albuquerque, New Mexico, that are being affected by the choice another family made in Egypt 3000 years ago. So, no pun intended, I think there is a sandpit.

We bumped up against a little trademark issue so decided to rename the company to Wicked/Good, which kind of captures both sides of the movies I like. But it started with John (Keville), who’s my long-term producing partner, and Macdara (Kelleher) at Wild Atlantic Pictures. Just coming up to ‘Evil Dead Rises,’ I was really starting to find confidence in my own voice and starting to really see other filmmakers and what they were doing, and thinking, how could I support them in their endeavours? But with the success of ‘Evil Dead Rise’ and the fortification of a relationship with Warner Brothers, that suddenly started to turn into, no, this really needs to be a company with its own identity. And we’re delighted that we’re out of the gates already with our first production.

Wicked/Good?

We’ve got a TV show that we are in full partnership with Blumhouse and Atomic Monster on, which I created with Glenn Montgomery. It’s called ‘Spiral’ and it’s set in 1980s Ireland and dripping in folklore, repression and the strangeness of the Irish countryside. We’ve also got a found-footage movie that we’re producing, and a slasher movie with two brothers from Aruba, which is a really, really interesting and a different approach to the slasher genre. So we are looking at new talent and also established talent as well, and just looking for really interesting stories that can plant flags in exciting places within the genre.

Not just horror

No, the wider genre. We’re interested in science fiction, we’re interested in comedy and we’re interested in thrillers. So no, it doesn’t have to have a ghost or a demon in it to be a Wicked/Good film, far from it. I think we’re just interested in stories that ideally can be theatrical or can be very noisy and certainly have some sort of event-like quality to them. And it’s very, very internationally focussed.

Anything else to direct?

I have a project called ‘Box of Bones,’ which I was developing after I made ‘The Hole in the Ground,’ and again after ‘Evil Dead Rise,’ and before I made ‘The Mummy.’ But it was kind of starting to just slip down the pecking order, and for some reason, it’s really, really appealing to me — it’s kind of burning in my mind. So I’m sitting at my new desk in my new house, and I’m like, ‘Is this the thing that’s going to start polluting the desk?’

What cinematic world you love

‘Lord of the Rings,’ for sure. The fact that that’s over at New Line — I’d always be whispering a little bit of elvish the corner. That’s a world that I absolutely adore. I’d drop everything for an opportunity to play around in Middle-earth. And then, from a horror point of view, I would find it very hard not to have a swing at ol’ Freddy Krueger, because he haunted my nightmares throughout my entire childhood and still pops up about four times a year. But I actually think it’s unlikely that my next movie will be franchise adjacent — and that’s something that feels important to me right now.