Writer-producer-director Alex Kurtzman has had a bit of a mixed bag career. While he’s been attached to a variety of mega-blockbusters, including the revamped “Star Trek” film franchise and the “Transformers” franchise, none of his work has been particularly…great. There have been high points, but there have also been some serious lows, including “The Amazing Spider-Man 2” and the recent film “The Mummy,” in which he wrote and directed. And according to the filmmaker, he’s had his fair share of painful and awkward encounters during his career.
It’s that last film mentioned, “The Mummy” which seems to have stuck in the mind of many film fans. Starring Tom Cruise, the action film was set to be the beginning of the Dark Universe cinematic franchise, which would have included all the classic Universal monsters like Bride of Frankenstein, Wolfman, and Creature from the Black Lagoon. Instead, “The Mummy” was a monumental disaster and cratered the fledgling cinematic universe before it could even fully get off the ground.
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And in a new interview with THR, Kurtzman opens up about his experience and while he admits the process was painful and he’s no longer attached to the Dark Universe, there was a silver lining.
“‘The Mummy’ wasn’t what I wanted it to be. I’m no longer involved in [the Dark Universe] and have no idea what’s going on with it,” said Kurtzman. “I look back on it now [and] what felt painful at the time ended up being an incredible blessing for me. I learned that I need to follow my own instincts, and when I can’t fully do that, I don’t think I can succeed. Those films are beautiful because the monsters are broken characters, and we see ourselves in them. I hope those are the movies that they make; I want to see them.”
As of now, there doesn’t seem to be any movement on the rest of the Universal monster films, so it appears we are still a long ways away from seeing other filmmakers go down the road that Kurtzman stumbled on.
Another stumbling block in his career, that was up until now unknown, was when he went to Warner Bros. to pitch a reboot of “Batman” before Christopher Nolan signed on and did his “Dark Knight” Trilogy. Unbeknownst to Kurtzman and his producing/writer partner Roberto Orci, WB was looking to go in a very different direction after the flop of “Batman & Robin,” which led to a terrible pitch meeting.
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“We went in for ‘Batman’ before Christopher Nolan, not realizing that they wanted to shift to that [darker] tone,” revealed Kurtzman. “Halfway through the meeting, after three or four weeks of planning, the executive stopped us: ‘Did nobody tell you that we’re not going in that direction at all?’ We just said, ‘Thank you for your time. We should probably stop here.’ (Laughs.)”
As of now, Kurtzman seems happy working on his series “Star Trek: Discovery” and doesn’t have any major film aspirations ahead of him. We’ll see what the future holds, as the itch for feature film work might be too distracting to ignore.