The Mummy Filmmaker Lee Cronin Talks the Original Ending and Test Screening Mistruths

[This story contains spoilers for Lee Cronin’s The Mummy.]

Lee Cronin was both flattered and frightened when Jason Blum suggested titling his The Mummy reimagining as Lee Cronin’s The Mummy.

The Blumhouse CEO’s producing partner, James Wan (Atomic Monster), was the one who initially piqued Cronin’s interest in updating the property that dates all the way back to 1932. The Irish filmmaker —who was coming off of 2023’s Evil Dead Rise, the highest-grossing entry in Sam Raimi’s horror franchise —previously told The Hollywood Reporter that he was looking to do something original with his newfound cachet. But the freedom he was given to completely reinvent the classic monster became too tempting, and it eventually warmed him up to the idea of having the rare possessory movie title.

“It felt like the right way to own The Mummy title. I didn’t —in any way, shape or form —say yes, thinking, Yeah, this is because I’m a household name. Far from it. It allowed the film to have its own identity,” Cronin tells THR. “It’s a movie that is very, very singular in its approach, and it was singular from the moment it was written on the page, let alone when we shot it.”

The decision proved wise. While Cronin was editing his film in November 2025, the Brendan Fraser-fronted iteration of The Mummy franchise (1999-2008) announced its revival with Radio Silence‘s The Mummy 4. Cronin admits that a “minority” number of test viewers kept expecting there to be a connection to Fraser’s action-adventure trilogy that totaled nearly $1.3 billion at the office.

A couple weeks before Cronin’s April 17 release, Blumhouse‘s social media account went viral for repeatedly stating, “Brendan Fraser is not in Lee Cronin’s The Mummy.” Speculation soon followed that this effort was in response to the aforementioned test audience confusion, but Cronin shoots down that notion about the last-minute social media campaign.

“It was actually just driven by playfulness. By that late stage of our marketing campaign, our trailers were already out, and I don’t think there was necessarily any confusion,” Cronin says. “It was more that it’s fun to be noisy when you’re trying to break through in a marketplace.”

This isn’t the only matter Cronin is eager to clarify. Several months ago, a report claimed that the film was shedding its IP identity by retitling itself to The Resurrected, however that title was nothing more than one of several code names used during production. But what stuck in Cronin’s craw the most was when the same report put forth an account that Wan loathed the movie so much he walked out of a test screening.

“It’s nice to set the record straight. There was a little spell with this movie where the knives were definitely out,” Cronin recalls. “There was a claim that [producer] James Wan walked out of a test screening [in disgust]. No, he needed to go to the bathroom. It was also the third time he’d seen the movie at that point. So it’s much easier for people to make noise about things that are mistruths because the truth isn’t that interesting. James Wan wanting more Milk Duds doesn’t get anybody going.”

If that wasn’t enough, his movie’s mummified character poster generated some recent controversy in the U.K. over the potential impact it could have on children who take notice of the creepy imagery. The counterargument is that the world is filled with so many visible atrocities right now that a make-believe movie poster seems like the least of our problems. Just take a quick look at the algorithm-driven results on any social media platform.

“I’ll always just stand back and go, ‘There’s a lot of arresting things and images we’re faced with every day in the world, let alone the poster from a horror movie,’” Cronin says.

Lee Cronin’s The Mummy chronicles the reunion between the Cannon family and their now-17-year-old daughter Katie who disappeared eight years earlier in Cairo, Egypt. The rub is that she was recovered inside a 3,000-year-old sarcophagus. Husband and wife, Charlie (Jack Reynor) and Larissa (Laia Costa), then take it upon themselves to reverse Katie’s corpse-like appearance and figure out what actually happened to her.

Below, during a conversation with THR, Cronin also discusses his unique ability to deliver gore without ruffling the MPA’s feathers. Then he reveals what the original ending was going to be until test audiences informed him that he needed to pursue a slightly more crowd-pleasing coda.

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So I rarely ever start with low-hanging fruit, but I’m going to make a couple exceptions, starting with Brendan Fraser. He’s not in Lee Cronin’s The Mummy. It was a fun social media gag, but was there a necessity to it as well? Did test audiences actually expect him to show up since The Mummy 4 was announced last November?

I never quite got my mind clear on this. When we tested the movie, the vast majority of people said, “This is a very different Mummy movie,” and that was exciting to them. Then that vocal minority would say, “Oh, I thought it was going to be like what came before.” And even when we informed [test audiences] beforehand that they shouldn’t expect that, it still didn’t change [the vocal minority’s] response. So it was baked-in a little bit, and audiences sometimes look for the shortcut to a reference in some way, shape, or form.

But truthfully, in terms of the playfulness online, it was actually just driven by playfulness. By that late stage of our marketing campaign, our trailers were already out, and I don’t think there was necessarily any confusion. It was more that it’s fun to be noisy when you’re trying to break through in a marketplace.

The second piece of low-hanging fruit involves the title. There were rumors that it was changed to The Resurrected, so what’s the real story behind Lee Cronin’s The Mummy?

It’s much, much simpler. I wrote a screenplay called The Mummy by Lee Cronin. Then some very smart people who I trust [particularly Jason Blum] read the script and suggested, “What if we call it Lee Cronin’s The Mummy? It is so distinct that we should own its identity even more.” It was actually two years ago that we announced the title as Lee Cronin’s The Mummy, and if I’m remembering that right, nothing ever changed from there.

Movies often have code words, and there were a variety of code words for this movie. The Resurrected was one that somebody jumped on and then determined that it was somehow [the new title] because of the existence of other Mummy movies out there. But internally, the title never, ever shifted from when it was first set.

It’s nice to set the record straight. There was a little spell with this movie where the knives were definitely out. There was a claim that [producer] James Wan walked out of a test screening [in disgust]. No, he needed to go to the bathroom. It was also the third time he’d seen the movie at that point. So it’s much easier for people to make noise about things that are mistruths because the truth isn’t that interesting. James Wan wanting more Milk Duds doesn’t get anybody going.

Not a lot of filmmakers have their names in titles. Were you more flattered or frightened by your producers’ suggestion?

To be candid, it’s a little bit of both. When it was proposed to me, the ego didn’t go, “Yeah, rock on! Let’s do this.” I was like, “You’re going to have to give me the weekend to think about it.” But in the end, it felt like the right way to own The Mummy title. That was the point. I didn’t —in any way, shape or form —say yes, thinking, Yeah, this is because I’m a household name. Far from it. It allowed the film to have its own identity, and it was really important to me that the film could have its own identity.

It’s a movie that is very, very singular in its approach, and it was singular from the moment it was written on the page, let alone when we shot it. So, from that point of view, I felt comfortable. It’s definitely flattering for the 12-year-old me who dreamt of making movies, and being in Los Angeles to promote the movie and seeing my name on billboards was quite a trip.

Surprisingly, the MPA didn’t give you a hard time on Evil Dead Rise, but you must be on a first name basis with all of their members after Lee Cronin’s The Mummy.

(Laughs.)

Did they actually put you through the wringer?

I didn’t have one single conversation on this one either.

C’mon!

Genuinely! After it was submitted, nobody ever came back to me. I do know that we were right on the line, and I’m hoping I have a skill of being right on the line. As a student of film and a student of horror movies as well, you hear these stories about cuts and changes, and I was actually expecting that to take place. I do push really far within my own tone and style, and people might laugh when they read this, but I don’t stay in that place to punish you at all. I always withdraw and move on to the next crazy idea that’s in my mind. And maybe it’s that smallest amount of restraint that allows me to get away with what I’m doing.

From a marketing perspective, there’s always challenges when you have a movie kind of like this. Interestingly, with Evil Dead Rise, Ireland and the U.K. were the trickier places to be able to advertise the movie on the side of buses. And just this week, one of the The Mummy posters kicked up a little bit of a social media storm in the U.K. So I’ll always just stand back and go, “There’s a lot of arresting things and images we’re faced with every day in the world, let alone the poster from a horror movie.”

(Spoiler Warning.) I figured Carmen’s (Veronica Falcón) death scene and wake would have endless notes. Both those sequences involved a running gag with her dentures, and while it seemed like fun genre high jinks, it’s actually rooted in your personal life. Do you mind going there?

Oh, I don’t mind at all. I don’t have a mannequin in my office that I just look at and go, “What can I do to this?” Anybody that works closely with me understands that when I get excited about a scene, it’s usually driven by something else. Sometimes, it’s purely about spectacle.

But I had to make a phone call on behalf of a loved one who’d passed away to remind the hospital and an undertaker that one of their dying wishes was to make sure that they had their teeth in during their wake. They didn’t want to be gummy, and it’s as simple as that. You don’t expect to have to make a phone call like that on a Monday, and having to make that bizarre request is something that will always stick with me. That’s why, in the dinner scene, [the youngest daughter] has a loose tooth and Granny [Carmen] plays around with her dentures. That was always very, very intentional because I knew where I was going to take it.

So it’s not always about being dark. It’s just the life experiences that I have and things that I find weird or unusual or challenging or arresting. That’s why the wake is such an out-there sequence. I’ve experienced wakes. They’re challenging and they’re beautiful, but they also stick quite heavily with you as a person. So to put that personal detail out there in quite an elaborate fashion was very much the intent.

(Spoiler Warning.) I’ve covered enough movies with codas to know that they are often added via additional photography in response to test audiences. Did they in fact inspire that moment of comeuppance for the Magician (Hayat Kamille)? Or was it always in the cards?

It was always in the cards, but test screenings then gave the confidence to see it through. During the seven- or eight-month process of editing a movie, there are often different approaches to endings and to beginnings as well. At one point, we ended the movie earlier. We ended it more around Charlie’s sacrifice, which was really important to me, but it was leaving the audience feeling a little bit incomplete. I really care about the audience having a thrill ride, but also having some semblance of relief or celebration.

I then realized, “You know what? We’ve put these characters through a lot. We’ve punished them and dragged them into all these different dark places. We’ve got to let them off the hook a little bit at the end. We can’t leave them arrested in these moments.” So we felt then we had to push past the power of Charlie’s sacrifice, and also —even if it’s internal — give the audience something of a reason to cheer.

In the edit, there were other small details throughout the whole story where it felt important to actually maintain a sense of hope. At one point, Layla’s [May Elghety] life came under more threat as well. But the more I watched it and looked at how innocent she was as a little kid, I felt that she didn’t deserve to suffer so much later on in the movie. She needed to be more heroic as well. So you’re always trying to measure these things in the edit and find a formula that makes for the most satisfying experience.

(Spoiler Warning.) I saw May Calamawy on the carpet with this makeup effect on her neck, and I wondered if it was some kind of new fashion trend. Well, now it makes a lot more sense. Did she surprise you with that in-character makeup?

In terms of the red carpet, we actually cooked that up while texting each other on different flights to L.A. [for the premiere]. It was like, “Can we get another prosthetic? It’ll be fun.” May is a really warm-hearted, slightly goofy, very entertaining person to be around, and the character of Zaki has this control to her. People really love her silent simplicity in a lot of ways. The scorpion scene was a supernatural roadblock for Zaki and the fact that she knows the words that can help this family. She has seen this tape of Katie. So that area of the neck can really affect your voice, as she proved [with her difficulty speaking]. And so we thought it’d be pretty fun to have her say very little on the carpet and just give that stare while wearing the wound. May even named her special little neckpiece, Lilith, and it was important for her to bring Lilith to the premiere.

I initially had a hard time believing that the Egyptian doctors, as well as customs, would let Charlie and Larissa bring Katie back to Albuquerque so soon. But then there’s a scene where Charlie (Jack Reynor) and Larissa argue about her potentially needing in-patient care, and Larissa, being a nurse, insists she can handle it even though it’s clearly beyond her expertise. So then I resolved my hang-up by telling myself that she probably argued with the Egyptian doctors and customs officials to let them take their rotting teenage child home. Did you see it in a similar way?

Yeah, absolutely. When I was designing the movie, I often thought about the actual journey and what that would be. Laia [Costa] gives this beautiful performance as Larissa, and while we talked about how she’s blinkered, she’s not completely naive either. Her way of recovering from this is to double down and say, “I can make it better.” Sometimes, when we make a mess, we think that just cleaning over the top of it will cover it, and there’s a little bit of that about Larissa. She does have a medical background, and while the doctor says Katie is essentially locked in, all of her vitals are essentially okay.

I spoke about this a lot with some of my closest colleagues, and the time comes when you have to make a choice. I wanted this film to partially take place in Egypt, but I also wanted to bring this mummy into the home of an American family. That was part of the big idea. So I was like, “I’m just going to have to swallow that pill and make sure that it happens.” But I do think that it came down to Larissa’s background, her fortitude and her want. You can see it even when she listens to Katie’s heart, and she so distinctly wants to say her heart is strong. It was as if that was all that mattered right now.

Despite that single-mindedness, it’s actually Larissa that turns during the wake scene. She says, “I don’t want her here anymore,” and it’s one of my favorite moments. Charlie thinks she’s talking about the specificity of this very immediate wake for her mother, but that’s not what it’s about at all. It’s actually about the fact that Larissa’s instinct is telling her that there’s something very, very wrong with Katie.

When we last spoke, you were leaning away from doing another Evil Dead movie in favor of something original you’d already been working on at the time. But then The Mummy came out of nowhere to capture your imagination. And don’t get me wrong, it’s essentially an original movie with recognizable branding.

Yeah, I do like to view this movie [as an original]. I was totally aware going into it that we were playing around with the title and audience expectations and film history and canon in our own way. Audiences also really enjoyed the spectacle of Evil Dead Rise, and I like movies like that as well. They create this hot, sweaty environment when you watch them, and they make people scream and squirm. It’s very intoxicating as a filmmaker to see an audience react to your work that way, but I felt that I hadn’t pushed it all the way. So I wanted to push it further, and that was another part of the draw to The Mummy.

But will you likely return to that previous plan?

I think that return is quite imminent for me. My producer, John Keville, and I have been talking every day about what’s next without defining quite what that is. But there’s definitely a couple of projects that were placed down in order to allow me to make The Mummy. They play closer to a ghost story than something heavy into the body horror space.

One of those stories is about a couple and a supernatural entity in their world that is stopping the development and the recovery of their relationship from a crisis. I also have another story that’s more about a woman in her 50s and her husband. Their relationship is set against the backdrop of the fact that she is a paranormal investigator in the world. These words often can be substituted in different ways, but in simple terms, I’m looking more deeply into ghost stories than monster movies at this point.

But I’m always really excited and open because I didn’t know after Evil Dead Rise that The Mummy was going to capture my imagination the way it did. In releasing this movie, people are already making inquiries and saying, “Hey, would you take a look at this? ” So you never know what might click for you and why. But it’s nice to have a desk with a couple of things on it that I am very interested in doing after a short break and a little bit of recovery, especially with a film like this.

I only finished The Mummy four-and-a-half weeks ago. So there’s been a lot of whiplash now that it’s already scaring audiences and drawing strong differences of opinions from critics. So I need a minute to actually be a human and remind myself that it’s okay to stay up late and watch TV. It’s okay to go for a hike at one o’clock in the day when I should be writing. To me, rest is actually forgetting about the clock and responsibility for a short period of time. But it never lasts long when you have the want to continue to create.

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Lee Cronin’s The Mummy is now playing in movie theaters.