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‘The Mummy’ A Box Office Smash For Tom Cruise Despite Low U.S. Numbers And Terrible Critic Reviews

By Ryan DeVault
Published on: 06:57 PST, Jun 10, 2017

The Mummy is a box office success, with worldwide numbers already coming in. Though early reports suggest a Mummy box office flop, the overseas money is showing how much appeal Tom Cruise still has to move audiences everywhere. As a report by Box Office Mojo states the reboot of the Brendan Fraser franchise pulled in an estimated $12 million at the domestic box office. That’s not even close to what Universal was hoping the United States box office would give the movie on its opening day. It’s also only part of the story.

Overseas, The Mummy box office receipts look a bit different, as the movie has already pulled in an estimated $139 million. That’s just through Friday (June 9), so the film still has Saturday and Sunday to add to its opening weekend tally. On an estimated production budget of $125 million and taking into account advertising costs, the movie will likely turn a profit on June 10. That is a quick turnaround for the film, making The Mummy a box office smash already. If fan reviews turn out positive, those numbers could pick up during the summer months.

Over at Rotten Tomatoes, reviews for The Mummy have not been good at all. From a critics view, that would make The Mummy a flop, even if the film does earn double what it cost to make. With 186 critic reviews counted so far, the film has earned a score of just 4.3-out-of-10. It’s getting called only 17 percent “fresh” and critics have suggested that this film could doom the Dark Universe as it lacks the “campy fun of the franchise’s most recent entries.” Fans haven’t been that pleased either, as out of the first 34,610 user ratings only 45 percent report to have liked it.

This is certainly mixed news for The Mummy, as it likely means that the domestic box office will settle in around $30 million during the opening weekend. The film will easily pass the $200 million worldwide threshold over the weekend, but that certainly doesn’t meet the expectations of an action film starring Tom Cruise. It could also put further films in the franchise at risk, especially with the low critic scores thus far.

Universal Pictures also put out the three Mummy movies that starred Brendan Fraser, so it was easy to expect that they would eventually reboot the franchise. When The Mummy, starring Fraser and Rachel Weisz, debuted in 1999, it earned roughly $155.4 million domestically and just over $260.5 million overseas. That works out to a worldwide box office total of about $416 million.

The success of the first Brendan Fraser film led to two sequels, with The Mummy Returns making around $433 million worldwide and The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emporer coming it at around $401 million worldwide. Those three films relied heavily on campy humor, including putting the main character Rick O’Connell (Fraser) into ridiculous situations that he took seriously, but were equally amusing for moviegoers.

Having The Mummy’s opening weekend during the run of Wonder Woman won’t be a good move in hindsight. Through June 9, the estimated box office total for Wonder Woman is already $163 million in the United States alone. That includes leading the way for all films with another $15.8 million (estimated) on Friday. Third place was Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie at an estimated $3.6 million and then Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales with an estimated $3 million.

Is The Mummy the worst movie Tom Cruise has ever made? Going just by critics scores alone, that might be possible, as it is one of the worst-reviewed movies he has ever been in. It won’t come close to getting the worst score on Rotten Tomatoes, though, as that honor belongs to Cocktail from 1988. Cocktail received a score of only five percent from critics, easily winning it the award for “Worst Tom Cruise Movie.” Could The Mummy reviews get worse even as the box office continues to climb?

[Featured Image by Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images]

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