She played a soft-spoken killing machine in last year’s criminally underappreciated action gem Kingsman: The Secret Service, and now Sofia Boutella could become one of Hollywood’s most iconic monsters.
A new, unconfirmed report indicates that Boutella is in talks to play the title role in The Mummy, Universal Pictures’ upcoming reboot of its big-screen monster franchise.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, the 2017 film will feature a female version of the titular monster when it arrives in theaters. The Mummy is intended to be the first installment of a larger cinematic universe featuring classic Universal horror icons Dracula, Frankenstein, The Invisible Man, and other familiar creature-feature stars.
The Bride of Frankenstein and the vampire-hunting hero Van Helsing are also expected to be part of Universal’s movie-monster universe. Recent rumors indicated that Tom Cruise was in talks to star in The Mummy as the film’s human protagonist, but the actor has denied the reports.
Set to be directed by Transformers and Star Trek writer Alex Kurtzman, The Mummy features a script by Prometheus screenwriter Jon Spaihts. Details of the film’s script have been kept under wraps (pun intended) by the studio thus far, but Boutella’s potential involvement lends some support to the recent rumor that the film could feature a female mummy tormenting the still-unidentified hero.
Boutella’s breakout role in Kingsman has earned her quite a bit of attention lately, and resulted in the actress earning a role in the upcoming Star Trek Beyond, among other notable projects.
The Mummy became one of Hollywood’s biggest movie monsters back in 1932 when Boris Karloff first portrayed the shambling, bandaged creature on the big screen, and celebrated actor Lon Chaney, Jr. later portrayed the character in three sequels released between 1942 and 1944. Director Stephen Sommers later revived the franchise with a trilogy of relatively successful films released between 1999 and 2008 that cast Brendan Fraser as an intrepid treasure hunter forced to battle an immortal mummy played by Arnold Vosloo in the first two films, then by Jet Li in 2008’s The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor.
The Mummy is currently scheduled to hit theaters March 24, 2017. The film is expected to be followed by another Universal monster movie released in March 2018.
