Warner Bros and New Line opened Lee Cronin's Mummy reboot Friday to $5.2 million and a third-place finish behind Super Mario Galaxy Movie and Project Hail Mary. [1] Industry analysts project a $12 to $13 million opening weekend, the lowest for any Mummy title — beneath Tom Cruise's 2017 bomb and well under the Brendan Fraser trilogy that defined the franchise for a generation. [2]

The R-rated horror version, produced by James Wan's Atomic Monster and Jason Blum's Blumhouse, is the first Universal-monster reboot since the Dark Universe collapsed in 2017. Cronin, coming off Evil Dead Rise, relocated the story from Egyptian adventure to a domestic possession narrative set in Aswan. Rotten Tomatoes aggregated 45 percent positive from 125 critics; Metacritic scored 46 from 22, indicating "mixed or average." Audiences polled by CinemaScore handed it a C+. [3]

Deadline's Gregory Nussen called the film "noxious and gnarly" but "protracted and exceedingly hampered by imitation," citing borrowed beats from Evil Dead, The Exorcist, and Hereditary. [4] The New York Post's Johnny Oleksinski scored it 1.5 of 4, calling it "just 'The Exorcist' with gauze." The Guardian gave it two stars of five. [3]

Production cost $22 million net after Irish tax credits, per Deadline tracking. [2] A Brendan Fraser-led Mummy sequel is already in development at Universal. Warner Bros, in the meantime, got the first reboot to reach theaters — and a mixed verdict for the trouble. [4]

-- CAMILLE BEAUMONT, Los Angeles