Lee Cronin Chose The Mummy Revamp Over Evil Dead Rise Sequel

Horror filmmaker Lee Cronin has spoken on why he chose to turn down leading the sequel to his 2023 contribution to Sam Raimi’s iconic supernatural Evil Dead franchise, Evil Dead Rise, instead opting to focus on his upcoming reboot of Universal’s The Mummy franchise with Lee Cronin’s The Mummy.

As the fifth film in the horror franchise, Evil Dead Rise starred Lily Sullivan and Alyssa Sutherland as two sisters who find themselves battling against each other when Sutherland’s character becomes possessed by the Deadlites. Morgan Davies, Gabrielle Echols, and Nell Fisher also appear as Sutherland’s children in the film.

The film was received with approval by the die-hard Evil Dead fanbase and earned 85% on Rotten Tomatoes, as well as grossing $147 million worldwide from a $15-19 million budget to become the most profitable contribution to the series. It also received two nods at the 51st Saturn Awards (Best Horror Film and Best Make-Up).

Despite this success, Cronin turned down taking on the anticipated sequel to instead take the reins of another revamp of a classic, influential horror series.

“The risk was not making a sequel to my last movie, because that was really easy for me to do,” Cronin shared with SFX as reported in GamesRadar.

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“I said no, ultimately, because I wanted to do something else, and I like to take a risk and gamble”, he added.

“The other risk factor is that there are brilliant movies called The Mummy, but they’ve also been there since the ’30s. It’s not just about Brendan Fraser, 25 years ago, but there’s a risk because modern culture probably looks at those movies that way,” the filmmaker further explained. “Maybe the Tom Cruise one wasn’t necessarily as well received, although I really enjoyed that film, but for me, the risk was breaking the mould in terms of what people will expect.”

The filmmaker concluded: “It’s going to definitely surprise people, but when you make a movie you have to take a risk, because it might be your last chance to make something, and repeating a trick is a sin to me.”

The new film stars Jack Reynor, Laia Costa, May Calamawy, Natalie Grace, and Verónica Falcón, focusing on a family dealing with their previously missing daughter returning with some ghoulish reanimated features. It will be the 14th installment in the franchise, which began way back in 1932 with Karl Freund’s film starring Boris Karloff.

Sébastien Vaniček has written and directed an Evil Dead spin-off titled Evil Dead Burn, due for release on July 24th.

Lee Cronin’s The Mummy crawls into cinemas on April 17th.

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Ros Tibbs

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Ros is a film and lit graduate writing news and reviews at The People's Magazine. She also writes long-form film theory, film history, analytical or curated recommendations pieces on other platforms.

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