Though there are many successful stars in the industry who can called certified hitmakers of Hollywood, no one is revered more in that regard than Tom Cruise, one of the biggest names in the business. For almost half a decade, he has managed to make sure all of his endeavors in the industry are some of the most successful in history.

Tom Cruise
And keeping good on that promise, the star still seeks to make the best form of cinema that he can offer to the public to keep his reputation going. But even with countless commercial and critical hits, the star has still faced disappointments in his career with the films he’s made, one of them being the reboot of Brendan Fraser’s classic franchise.

Popular for making some of the most commercially successful franchises like the iconic Mission: Impossible, or film series like Top Gun, it almost seemed like a no-brainer that Tom Cruise wouldn’t turn the reboot of the iconic The Mummy franchise into an even greater success story than the last. Therefore, in 2017, Universal Studios released the highly-anticipated film of the same name that would give rise to the company’s very own Dark Universe. But it proved to be a big failure, and Brendan Fraser reveals the reason behind it.

In a past interview with Variety, the Killers of The Flower Moon star was talking about his potential reprisal of his iconic character Rick O’Connell if the studio decided to try their hand at reviving the franchise one more time. The star said that he would be very happy to do so, and also revealed the reason why the Eyes Wide Shut star failed to make an impact with his iteration. He said that the film lacked fun, something that was crucial for their franchise, which led to the success of their series. Fraser said:

“It is hard to make that movie, The ingredient that we had going for our ‘Mummy,’ which I didn’t see in the new one, was fun. That was what was lacking in that incarnation. It was too much of a straight-ahead horror movie. ‘The Mummy’ should be a thrill ride, but not terrifying and scary.”

The collapse of the first film in the franchise evidently led to the discarding of the entire franchise that was planned.

Along with the aforementioned reason for the failure of the film, the other reason why the franchise was nipped in the bud was due to the fact that the approach to creating the franchise was flawed from the beginning. Universal Studios wanted to expand upon the film with such a rapid pace that they disregarded the subtleties and proper world-building of the series in the film.

This led to poor planning and execution of the 2017 film, which the audience naturally didn’t like since there was a promise of something grand and impactful farther down the road without setting up for it in the present.