George Romero became attached to the project in 1994 with a script co-written by Alan Ormsby and John Sayles. It’s a moment of levity, but one that fits entirely in Barker’s wheelhouse.īarker was one of several iconic horror directors courted for the project over time. O’Connor-who also starred in Barker’s Lord of Illusions-tries to fend off the mummy by praying to every deity he can think of. Some elements of Barker’s version do actually make it into the finished product, like the scene where Kevin J.
His version was scrapped and Stephen Sommers was brought in to do a large-scale adventure update on the 1932 original. When that proved successful, Barker would literally send the box off returns to the executives at Universal, just to prove a point. Shortly after that, Miramax released The Crying Game, which featured a very similar twist. Whatever their moral stance on the topic of a transgender heroine, they insisted the idea would be box office poison. Universal was not sold on a dark, hard R version of The Mummy with a transgender protagonist in any way, shape or form and called Barker’s vision twisted and perverted. Meanwhile, our antiheroine is seducing her way through the male character, only to be revealed in the third act as the boy-child, now turned via surgery and hormones into a woman.” Of the boy-child, now presumably grown to adulthood, we get no sight. An uncommonly beautiful woman is threaded into the action, a seducer and murderer of mysterious origin. The narrative then jumps ahead 20 years or so, and we pick up the story of how sacred Egyptian artifacts are being brought to America for an exhibition that would put the Tutankhamen exhibit to shame. In the first scene, a strange boy-child is born, under circumstances-high howling winds and a ferocious thunderstorm-that suggest something unnatural is afoot. “We had one particular narrative hook that we were very proud of. It made the Mummy story over for the late 20th century, not in terms of its effects-this was before CGI brought its dubious gifts to the process of horror filmmaking-but in terms of content. It’s obvious to see why Universal wouldn’t run with it, unfortunately, but it would have been an amazing and unique metaphysical horror film if they had.īarker explained his take in an interview with Fangoria: “ Looking back, our version of THE MUMMY was precisely what the powers that were at Universal did not want. As Barker and Garris discussed their story in more detail, however, the project sounded kind of amazing.