Universal Hires Billy Ray to Write Another Script for ‘The Mummy’ Reboot

Universal is so insistent on reviving its “Mummy” franchise that it has hired screenwriter Billy Ray to write another script for its planned reboot. While the studio attached “Prometheus” scribe Jon Spaihts to pen a screenplay last year, it wants another, competing script ready to go as an additional assurance that the film will be ready for its 2014 release date.

While studios hiring multiple screenwriters to a project isn’t all that rare, this notion of a competing script is. Typically, a screenwriter might come aboard after a script is finished to provide a polish or rewrite chunks of it, but these two screenplays will be in development at the same time.

Indeed, as Vulture notes, studios rarely employ this tactic “because credit arbitration is usually a nightmare.” However, it’s a risk Universal is willing to take since it believes “The Mummy” will be a financial hit next year.

Both scripts are said to be rather similar in concept: both will be a modern day take on the old myth, and both will presumably be in the same sort of mode. An insider close to the situation believes that the two scripts will eventually be mashed together with both writers receiving credit.

“My suspicion is that one of them will be a ‘structure-and-body’ man, and one’s going to be a ‘character-and-dialogue’ man – and that they’ll then just gang-bang them together into one script,” the insider explains.

At any rate, Universal has essentially “double its chances” of putting the movie into production by the end of the year, which is the biggest issue at hand. As the same insider notes, “studios don’t shoot movies anymore” but instead “shoot release dates.

Len Wiseman is currently attached to direct the reboot, while Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci produce. That duo is also overseeing production on a “Van Helsing” reboot for Universal, though that film hasn’t been given a release date.