This is a bit of an odd one. It's been known for some time that Universal was keen to reboot The Mummy franchise, and that director Len Wiseman was attached to the project. Also, one of the writers of Prometheus, Jon Spaihts, had been hired to put a screenplay together.
However, it seems as though Universal is on something of a timetable here, with a summer 2014 release targeted (to be fair, launching anything into the summer of 2015 is looking increasingly difficult). As such, it's now ordered a second screenplay to be produced, in tandem with the first.
Billy Ray, who adapted The Hunger Games, is starting from scratch on a new screenplay, while presumably Spaihts will continue to press ahead with this. Universal will then either chose one or the other, or seek to combine them both. Hmmm.
Both are set in the present day, Vulture reports. But it seems a strange way to motivate a pair of writers, to effectively have them outright competing with each other. We'll find out if it works next year, presumably...
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