Spanish director Andres Muschietti is about to go from Mama to Mummy. Universal Pictures has been in the process of setting up a reboot of The Mummy franchise for the past year or two with Len Wiseman (Total Recall, Underworld) originally signing on to direct at about this time last year. He recently dropped out due to scheduling issues, although strangely he doesn’t appear to have anything else on his plate at the moment. Regardless, this left Universal in desperate need of a director and they decided to turn to Muschietti, who hit paydirt for them earlier this year with his horror flick Mama. It made $146 million worldwide on a $15 million budget, which is certainly nothing to sneeze at… but can he breathe new life into a classic Hollywood horror icon?

According to THR, Andres Muschietti is currently “circling a deal” to take on The Mummy reboot for Universal Pictures and producers Alex Kurtzman, Roberto Orci and Sean Daniel. The script was written by Jon Spaihts (Prometheus) although earlier this year Vulture reported that there was a second Mummy screenplay being written by Billy Ray (The Hunger Games). It’s unclear if they plan to combine elements of both scripts although both are set in contemporary society.

It has been previously stated that this new version of The Mummy will be darker and more horror-oriented than the Stephen Sommers movies, although it will still have action-adventure elements as well. Certainly this change in directors would seem to be swaying the pendulum more to the side of horror, but I guess we’ll have to wait and see. What do you think, is Andres Muschietti an improvement on Len Wiseman? Does this news make you more or less interested in a reboot of The Mummy?