The Mummy 2017 cast, trailer, release date, plot and everything you need to know
*Tom Cruise enters stage left, pursued by shambling corpse*
Universal has its sights set on a shared cinematic universe, a universe of monsters, and it all starts with The Mummy.
The studio is bringing its classic, bandage-wrapped monster back again for another go around. Expect more walking corpses, curses and plagues of [insert your least favourite insect here].
Forget Brendan Fraser's roguish charm. Forget Rachel Weisz's damsel in distress (we know she's done her best to). Tom Cruise has this covered.
The Mummy 2017 cast: Brendan who?
Universal has managed to bag a major star to help refresh The Mummy in the form of Tom Cruise as Nick Morton, a character we know next to nothing about but who *might* be connected to the military in some way.
Annabelle Wallis (Peaky Blinders, Grimsby) is a scientist type who oversees the transport of the titular mummy until something goes horribly wrong because what else were you expecting?
The mummy herself is Sofia Boutella (Star Trek Beyond, Kingsman: The Secret Service), while Jake Johnson (New Girl, Jurassic World) and Courtney B Vance (The People v OJ Simpson) will appear as more military men.
Spanish actor Javier Botet will bring some heavy mythology to the film as Set, the ancient Egyptian chaos god. And Russell Crowe will show up as a character you may have heard of before, one Dr Henry Jekyll... (We mentioned the shared universe, right?)
The Mummy 2017 release date: World War Mummy
The film will be released on June 9, 2017 in the UK and the US.
The only other film scheduled for release on that date is World War Z 2, a project that is yet to confirm its director, so we would expect it to arrive much later, if it ever does at all.
The Mummy's biggest rival is likely to be Wonder Woman, which arrives on June 2.
The Mummy 2017 plot: Gods and monsters
Seeing as we don't really know the details of its main character, it will probably come as little surprise that the rest of the plot is being kept under wraps (no pun intended) at the moment.
The mummy is Ahmanet, a long-dead princess who is disturbed from her resting place and - because what Mummy film would be complete without it - casts a curse over the modern world. The action will take place at least in part in London, a focal point of fictional curses thanks to the British Museum.
Although it turns out we only got a lady mummy because the original design looked too much like Apocalypse in the X-Men: Days of Future Past post-credits scene. So much for progress!
Cruise's Morton will actually die, or at least appear to die, early in the film. Director Alex Kurtzman apparently put that in to make us believe that our hero will be in genuine jeopardy, but unfortunately we've already seen him revive in a morgue afterwards. Nice try anyway.
He will also spend at least some of the movie screaming in abject terror.
Crowe's Jekyll seems to be an ally of Ahmanet, or at least very well informed about her motives, and is presumably there to build a bridge between the other monster movies...
The shared Universal Monsters universe starts here
Speaking of the universe building, The Mummy is definitely where it starts.
