Trivia / The Mummy (1999)

• Ability over Appearance: Evy was intended to be an American, and mostly American actresses were auditioned for the part. Rachel Weisz had to audition fifteen times before she was cast, and Evy was made British.
• Actor-Inspired Element:
  • Arnold Vosloo wanted to play the role of Imhotep "completely straight", feeling that the character would view the whole situation as Romeo and Juliet.
  • The role of the warden Hassan was written to be more sadistic, like Rifki from Midnight Express. Omid Dijali lobbied to make the character more comedic.
  "So I did this piece to camera, it had nothing to do with the script, and he said, "That's great. Does it have to be so funny?" And I said, "The only way I can do this without being lynched by my own people is to make it slightly humorous."
• Backed by the Pentagon: The film had the support of the Royal Moroccan Army, and the cast even had kidnapping insurance taken out on them.
• Bad Export for You: The British home video version lets you turn off or rip the movie without the translation subtitles popping up (i.e. When Ardeth Bey is speaking with his Medjai cohorts about letting Rick go, thinking he'll die in the desert; any scene where Imhotep speaks), but the U.S. version has the subs burned on.
• California Doubling: The crew could not shoot in Egypt because of the unstable political conditions, they went to Morocco instead. The river Nile was doubled by none other than the Thames in London.
• Cast the Runner-Up: Stephen Dunham auditioned for the role of Rick O'Connell. He was rejected, but Stephen Sommers liked his acting so much that he made up the character Mr. Henderson just for him.
• Creator's Apathy: According to the DVD Commentary, Stephen Sommers, as well as his editing partner, Bob Duscay, there was a little debate about the coloration of how Mummy!Imhotep looks when the coffin is opened (darker and literally black) vs how he looks when he's woken up by Evy reading the Book of the Dead (tan-ish). Ultimately, they did nothing, claiming that the audience didn't notice.
• Creator Backlash:
  • Jerry Goldsmith reportedly hated the finished film and fell out with Stephen Sommers, resulting in him not returning for the sequel. Ironically, the score for this film is considered by many to be one of Goldsmith's best.
  • John Hannah claimed in interviews that he didn't have the best time shooting the film because he felt the character of Jonathan was pretty redundant: he had been hired as a comedic actor but Beni was far more prevalent as the comedy relief and he didn't work as a sidekick either since Evy fulfilled that role as well. Whenever Hannah tried bringing this up to Stephen Sommers, the latter would just tell him to make something up. Luckily, later films in the series would give Jonathan a more focused role as the comic relief and give him more stuff to do.
• Dawson Casting: Fifty-eight year old Aharon Ipale played Seti I who died at the age of forty-four. This continued further with his appearance in The Mummy Returns where he was sixty, The Ten Commandments: The Musical where he was sixty-five and the Exodus episode of the miniseries The Bible at which point he was seventy-two.
• Deleted Scene: A few scenes were cut:
  • When the group is riding to Hamunaptra, Jonathan and the Warden argue about his snoring. Then the groups finds a mass of skeletons partially buried in the sand. Ardeth thinks that the skeletons are other treasure-seekers who failed. To one corpse Rick says, "I knew that guy."
  • Beni is seen on board the ferry (revealing his participation in the quest earlier than the final film) telling the members of the rival expedition how long it will take to get to Hamunaptra.
  • An extended version of the scene where Rick and Jonathan find the Book of Amun-Ra. More of Imhotep's followers burst through the floor and attack, throwing them away before trying to open the Statue of Horus, presumably to steal the book. But this statue has been booby trapped (like the statue of Anubis that hid the chest with the Book of the Dead) and salt acid melts the mummies. This scene explains why holes suddenly appear in the floor in the theatrical cut.
  • In the original script, Evy was supposed to say, "He's gorgeous" when she first sees the fully resurrected Imhotep. The line was filmed, but removed from the final cut.
• Dyeing for Your Art: Arnold Vosloo dropped fifteen pounds to play Imhotep, anxious about how much of the film he'd be spending shirtless.
• Edited for Syndication: When the movie aired on TV (and also on the airline version), a bikini was digitally added to Anuck-su-namun's body.
• Enforced Method Acting:
  • Brendan Fraser's expression while he's in the noose? It was actually choking him and he passed out. According to Rachel Weisz, Fraser actually had to be resuscitated.
  Brendan Fraser: "They just said, 'Look good, don't die!' (push) ACTION!"
  • Arnold Vosloo was genuinely terrified while he was being wrapped in bandages for Imhotep's mummification scene.
• Fake American:
  • Sort of with Rick O'Connell. Rick is an American who is played by American-Canadian actor Brendan Fraser.
  • Averted with all the 'American cowboys' who are played by Americans.
• Fake Brit: The "Fake English" variant. John Hannah is Scottish, but plays an Englishman.
• Fake Mixed Race: Evy and Jonathan have Egyptian heritage through their mother. Rachel Weisz and John Hannah have neither with the former being of Italian, Austrian and Hungarian Jewish descent.
• Fake Nationality: Nobody who played an Egyptian character was actually Egyptian, or even Arab or African (except Imhotep, played by Afrikaner actor Arnold Vosloo).
  • Venezuelan Patricia Velásquez as Anck-su-namun.
  • Israeli actor Oded Fehr as the vaguely Muslim-ish Egyptian Ardeth Bay.
  • Beni is supposed to be Hungarian, yet Kevin J. O'Connor is an Irish-American from Chicago.
  • Omid Dijali is a British born Persian, playing the Egyptian warden Hassan.
• Harpo Does Something Funny: John Hannah recalls being told to "just mess about in the background, and if it's funny, we'll cover it".
• Money, Dear Boy: Inverted! Universal needed a hit film after the Box Office failures of Babe: Pig in the City and others, and cast Brendan Fraser because he had proven he could carry a hit movie in George of the Jungle but was still cheaper than most of the other leading men in Hollywood.
• Never Work with Children or Animals: In one scene, Beni is shown with a sackful of gold which he is trying to load onto a camel. He pulls the camel by the reins, but the camel doesn't budge. The camels all, for some reason, hated Kevin J. O'Connor.
• On-Set Injury: During the hanging scene where Evy barters for Rick's life as he's being hung in Cairo's prison for an unspecified crime, Brendan Fraser nearly choked to death, as the rope around his neck had too much tension on it. He ended up losing consciousness and was woken up by an EMT.
• One-Take Wonder: The library disaster was done in one take. It would have taken an entire day to re-shoot if a mistake had been made.
• Playing Against Type: John Hannah was surprised at being cast as Jonathan, not seeing himself as a comic actor.
• Prop Recycling:
  • The plastic dummies used as dessicated corpses in the film to represent the Mummy's victims are the same as those used in Lifeforce (1985). One character even refers to the Mummy sucking the 'lifeforce' out of people.
  • A cloak lent by the British costume rental company Angels and worn by an extra in this film was discovered to have in fact been made for Alec Guinness in A New Hope.
• Sleeper Hit: No one was expecting the film, which was a loose remake of a semi-obscure film from 1932, to be much of a success. Rachel Weisz and Arnold Vosloo were afraid they would never work again, and the latter recalls "when I got back my friends said 'why the fuck did you do a mummy movie'?" and there was very little interest from potential test audiences. Then, suddenly, interest increased after a 30-second spot at the Superbowl, and the film ultimately saved the studio from financial ruin.
• Spared by the Cut: Ardeth was originally scripted to die at the end of the film, but Stephen Sommers changed his mind and spared him because he thought the character was too heroic to be killed off.
• Star-Making Role:
  • This movie put Brendan Fraser over as an A-list action-comedy star for the decade to come.
  • It also brought Rachel Weisz to international attention.
  • Oded Fehr's career was launched as a result of this.
• Throw It In!: There's several moments of this.
  • The gag of Evy saving Rick from two gunshots on the boat was thought up the night before filming.
  • As well as when Rick jumps off the boat after telling the Egyptian warden "Wait here! I'll go get help!" was added at the last minute after Stephen Sommers realized he didn't write how the warden was supposed to get off the boat.
  • Also Beni's line "think of my children" was ad-libbed by Kevin J O'Connor. Brendan Fraser ad-libbed the reply "You don't have any children", to which O'Connor in turn ad-libbed "Someday I might".
• Unbuilt Casting Type: Rachel Weisz would later be typecast as confident, intelligent women of power. In her breakout role, Evy is a budding explorer who's stuck as a librarian because everyone doubts her competency. In an attempt to get more field experience, she ends up unleashing the titular monster and spends the whole movie trying to fix her own mess.
• Uncredited Role: John Sayles did an uncredited rewrite.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Leonardo DiCaprio was originally approached for the role of Rick O'Connell before Brendan Fraser was cast. However, DiCaprio turned down the offer due to filming commitments to The Beach, despite his fondness for the script. Brad Pitt, Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, Chris O'Donnell, Matthew McConaughey, and Tom Cruise were also considered for the part of Rick O'Connell (Cruise would later go on to portray Nick Morton in The Mummy).
  • The project went through years of Development Hell, with multiple different takes and scripts being worked on before the Sommers version finally got the green light.
    • Writer Abbie Bernstein was initially approached, and tasked with writing a film in the vein of The Terminator. Bernstein's mummy was the member of an Egyptian apocalyptic cult that is woken up accidentally with experimental medical technology, and begins a rampage in pursuit of the main character, who has the artifact it needs to initiate the end of the world. The mummy would also be forced to rewrap itself periodically with modern materials like barbed wire. George A. Romero was offered the job to direct, but turned it down, and this version never went any further.
    • In 1990, Clive Barker was hired to direct, with Mick Garris writing the screenplay based on Barker's story. This version would not have featured a traditional walking mummy, focusing more on unleashing the Egyptian pantheon on the modern world. The film would have also featured a transgender character who seduces her way through the cast. This last element is what turned Universal off the film, calling Barker's ideas "perverted."
    • Next, Joe Dante entered the picture as director in 1993, with a script written by Alan Ormsby (Cat People) and John Sayles. The story would have been a modernized take on the original Karloff film. After being awoken in modern day Los Angeles, Imhotep regenerates himself by sucking the lifeforce (or ka) from several people, and pursues his lost love Ankhesenamen, who has been reincarnated as lawyer Helen Grover. This draft originated scenes like the killer scarabs and Imhotep initially communicating in Hebrew. Dante wanted to cast Daniel Day-Lewis as Imhotep, and had supporting roles earmarked for Christopher Lee and Turhan Bey. The project ran into some Executive Meddling, with one suit at Universal not wanting to spend more than $15 million on the film (Dante wanted $25 million), and yet another insisting it should be a period piece instead of a contemporary story.
    • George A. Romero returned as director next, rewriting the Ormsby and Sayles draft in 1994. He made some extensive changes, including making Helen Grover the archaeologist who unearths Imhotep, and adding Kharis as a mummy henchman who recovers stolen artifacts that Imhotep needs to perform a ritual, and brutally killing anyone who gets in his way. This addition upped the graphic violence immensely, with lots of gory death scenes. Romero also concocted a twist in which Imhotep is revealed to be something of a sympathetic Anti-Villain who just wants to be released from his curse. Romero was forced to leave when MGM used a contractual obligation to make him go back to work on a film that had stalled, which ended up never happening.
    • Next up, Mick Garris returned to the project, this time in line to direct, and turned in a rewrite of Romero's draft in 1995. This draft followed the previous in most respects, mainly streamlining certain elements and tweaking characterizations, as well somewhat reducing the gore factor. This version got as far as location scouting and meeting with actors before Sid Sheinberg, then head of Universal, left the studio and took the Mummy property with him when he formed his own production company, The Bubble Factory. Garris ended up getting fired with the goal of replacing him with an A-list director, but they couldn't get anyone to sign on.
    • While the project was still at The Bubble Factory, a direction was considered that would be akin to Starman, with the mummy being a messianic figure bringing a message of hope with the coming of the new millenium. They eventually gave the project back to the producers who initially shephered it at Universal.
    • The producers, impressed with a Dracula script written by Kevin Jarre, hired Jarre and Lloyd Fonvielle to write an entirely new draft in 1996. Set in 1920s Egypt and New York City, it was a loose remake of The Mummy's Hand and its sequels, while adding the reincarnation romance angle from the original film. An American archaeological expedition unearths the mummy of Kharis, which pursues them back to New York in search of his reincarnated love. It plays out as a super violent horror story, including a scene with Kharis sucking a woman's brains out through her nose. The producers were happy with the script, but there was a regime change at Universal, and the new executives were no longer interested in making it. In addition to the period setting, this draft features an ex-Foreign Legionnaire hero named O'Connell, as well as the mummy plucking out the eyes of a member of the expedition and using them as his own. Jarre and Fonvielle, the last writers who worked on the film before Sommers' involvment, ended up with a story credit on the final film, despite their script being quite different.
  • Evy and Jonathan were originally to be the children of George Herbert, Lord of Carnarvon - the man who discovered King Tutankhamen's tomb (the man's daughter was indeed called Evelyn). But the only evidence of this in the final film is Evy saying that her father was "a very famous adventurer", and her last name is Carnahan rather than Herbert.
  • According to the cast commentary with Arnold Vosloo, Imhotep was to read the opening voice over. But when the director realized that he shouldn't know how to speak English, the narration was given to Ardeth instead.
  • The Medjai were originally supposed to be tattooed from head to toe, but Stephen Sommers vetoed it because he thought Oded Fehr was too good-looking to be covered up.
  • The director toyed with the idea of opening the film with the old Universal film logo, which would dissolve into the desert sun. He'd later use that opening for Van Helsing, though the logo would turn into the flame from a torch instead.
  • The opening scene was originally shot during the early afternoon but was changed in post-production to be sunset.
• Written-In Infirmity: While filming, John Hannah sprained his wrist and had to wear a brace on it, which shows up during his final scenes.

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