Tom Cruise’s The Mummy Failure: 8 Reasons Why Dark Universe Failed Before It Began

Universal Had 2 Great Opportunities To Launch The Failed Dark Universe Before Tom Cruise’s The Mummy

https://screenrant.com/universal-opportunities-dark-universe-before-2017-mummy/

Universal Pictures had a plan for its own Dark Universe and had two great opportunities it could have launched before Tom Cruise's failed The Mummy.

The plus's were it was rebooting the already successful/established (and dormant) Mummy franchise to the present day.

It had Cruise bringing his Mission Impossible action/stunt persona to the franchise and him returning to the horror genre for first time since 1994s Interview With The Vampire (plus it had fellow A-list Russell Crowe to face off with Cruise for first time)

It was presenting the Marvel style Cinematic Universe to kick off the 'Dark Universe' (no doubt resulting in an Avengers style movie in a few years after other Universal Monster movies featuring Dracula, Frankenstein, Bride of Frankenstein, Wolfman, Mummy, Invisible Man, Creature from Black Lagoon etc all played by A listers like Depp, Jolie, Bardem etc and some of those would be no doubt transported to the present day for the team up movie Cap America style, perhaps even Brendans Frasers character would somehow make an appearance..)

However all of that hinged on the new Mummy being a success with audiences which ultimately it wasn't (despite a half decent 400m worldwide gross - but only 80m domestic), the forced 'cinematic universe' thing turned audiences off too

Part of it was Cruise. His part was meant to be a smaller role allowing more time for other characters such as the villain to actually be developed. However since he wanted to play the part, all of that was thrown out just to make a Tom Cruise action film.