Alex Kurtzman Says 2017’s The Mummy Was ‘The Biggest Failure of My Life’

Alex Kurtzman recently looked back at his 2017 reboot of The Mummy, naming the Tom Cruise film as “the biggest failure of my life.” The Universal film was intended to kick off the “Dark Universe,” but its critical and box office drubbing killed those plans and changed Universal’s approach to its classic monsters, which led to Leigh Whannell’s 2020 hit The Invisible Man and a more creative-friendly approach to their horror remakes.

Kurtzman spoke with The Playlist for an interview promoting his The Man Who Fell to Earth series and said of The Mummy, “I tend to subscribe to the point of view that you learn nothing from your successes, and you learn everything from your failures. And that was probably the biggest failure of my life, both personally and professionally. There are about a million things I regret about it, but it also gave me so many gifts that are inexpressibly beautiful. I didn’t become a director until I made that movie, and it wasn’t because it was well directed – it was because it wasn’t.”

He continued, “And as brutal as it was, in many ways, and as many cooks in the kitchen as there were, I am very grateful for the opportunity to make those mistakes because it rebuilt me into a tougher person and it also rebuilt me into a clearer filmmaker. And that has been a real gift and I feel those gifts all the time because I’m very clear now when I have a feeling that doesn’t feel right – I am not quiet about it anymore. I will literally not proceed when I feel that feeling. It’s not worth it to me. And you can’t get to that place of gratitude until you’ve had that kind of experience. Look, if you look at history and you look at people who’ve made amazing things, every single one of them will tell you the same story which is that it came after a failure, so I look back on it now with gratitude. It took me a while to get there, but my life is better for it.”

The film did gross $410 million worldwide, but much of that was overseas and it still lost between $60 – $100 million for Universal based on the expensive budget and marketing cost. Universal eventually abandoned their Dark Universe plans due to the film’s failure and turned its focus to smaller-budgeted, unconnected films like The Invisible Man and the upcoming Renfield starring Nicolas Cage and Nicholas Hoult.