Is The Mummy set to lose $95 million?

The pain may not be over for ‘The Mummy’, according to reports which suggest that it could lose Universal as much as $95 million (£75 million).

The Tom Cruise vehicle, which is the first of a new movie each year from the studio’s planned ‘dark universe’ of intellectual property, has been panned mercilessly by critics.

But the upside appeared to have been that with a global opening of nearly $170 million (£134 million), it was Tom Cruise’s best opening box office haul to date.

However, according to Deadline, plumbing down into the movie’s production costs tells a different story.

It reports that the movie cost a massive $345 million (£272 million) in all, including the not insubstantial figure of $150 million on advertising, marketing and distribution.

And with the movie now floundering in both Europe and China, and with its box office take seemingly having stalled at $293 million, Deadline reckons Universal could be down to the tune of nearly $100 million once all figures are accounted for.

It’s enough to give executives a cold sweat, considering there are movies planned for (deep breath) ‘Doctor Jekyll and Mr Hyde’, ‘The Bride of Frankenstein’, ‘The Creature from the Black Lagoon’, ‘The Invisible Man’, ‘Van Helsing’, ‘The Wolf Man’, ‘Frankenstein’, ‘Dracula’, ‘The Phantom of the Opera’ and ‘The Hunchback of Notre Dame’, all in the same series, with intertwining plots and stars involved.

The movies will also feature the likes of Cruise, Russell Crowe, Johnny Depp, Sofia Boutella and Javier Bardem, which, other than newcomer Boutella, will come with a hefty price tag.

Meanwhile, ‘The Mummy’s director Alex Kurtzman has hit back of the critical drubbing the movie has received, saying that the movie was made for audiences, not critics.

“This is a movie that I think is made for audiences and in my experience, critics and audiences don’t always sing the same song,” he told Business Insider.

“Would I love them to love it? Of course, everybody would, but that’s not really the endgame. We made a film for audiences and not critics so my great hope is they will find it and they will appreciate it.”

It appears that time might have run out for that.

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