On Tuesday, at Sydney’s World Square, a giant, hand carved Sarcophagus sculpture, build entirely out of sand, was unveiled. Taking 250 man hours to create, it’s reveal was certainly a cause for celebration, so the cast of the film it was inspired by – The Mummy – popped by to show it off and answer a bit of a Q&A along the way. Ksenija Lukich conducted the interview with stars Tom Cruise, Russell Crowe, Sofia Boutella, Annabelle Wallis plus director Alex Kurtzman.
Tom, what drew you to this project
Tom: I remember the first photo Alex showed me of Sofia as the Mummy and I thought this was going to be incredible. Something that’s going to be adventurous, terrifying and fun.
Russell, it the first time you’ve worked together, what was that like after 20 years of friendship?
Russell: It was fantastic. Being on set with Tom is a privilege, he sets a cracking pace and you better be ready to keep up. We had some very long and intense days, in fact the work that this quartet put in on this movie it really shows on screen. You’ve got to see it, it’s a great film.
Tom: Remember that fight scene, we worked with the stunt creator because we had some ideas, it was great working with Russell because we were going flat out and I said “Russell, you work out the fight and you tell me what to do” and I showed up and they showed me the fight scene, I said great let’s do it, literally that’s what we did.
Alex: Four days of them beating each other up
Sofia you’re the Mummy, tell us about playing this formidable character.
Sofia: I’d been given this role here by Alex who I can’t stop thanking, it was an incredible honour to have been given the chance. I was super nervous at first but then I put my heart and soul into it and I saw the movie yesterday for the first time and I absolutely loved it.
Annabelle if you don’t mind me saying you’re a kick ass woman in this movie, can you tell us a little bit about Jenny.
Annabelle: Jenny is definitely a force to be reckoned with, she’s feisty, intelligent she’s well-rounded and she has to stand her ground in front of these two amazing men and I think she does it well. She keeps them in check.
We heard overnight that there was a new dark universe, Alex can you tell us about putting this whole new universe together
Alex: The studio talked about the monsters, they call them our monsters because the studio was built on the original monsters and you’re going to see Creature from the Black Lagoon, Bride of Frankenstein, Wolf Man, Dracula all the monster you grew up loving we are going to build a universe and I can’t wait.
Russell there’s going to be a little more of Hyde perhaps…
Russell: I don’t know we’ll see how we go down the track, I think this movie was created to stand on its own two feet, and stand alone. We’ll just have to see how people response to it, I’m sure there’s a bunch of people in the studio with some crazy ideas and dreams and we’ll see how it plays out
Tom tell us about the incredible zero gravity stunt that we have all seen on the trailers
Tom: It was something that I’ve always wanted to do, it was something I thought I’d do in Mission (Impossible) and then I went into Universal one morning and met with Alex and he sent this little plane crash and I was like this is going to work better in The Mummy, it’s going to be just perfect for it.
It was interesting it took a little bit I said you’ve got to do it in zero G and they thought it would be impossible because we had to build that little set inside that aircraft, but I have to say to right from the beginning with Annabelle I take my hat off to you because it was something that will challenge you and you haven’t done stunts before and while we were doing it the crew were vomiting between takes and we did 64 takes time after time and I’m throwing Annabelle around and you were just a champ throughout the whole thing you were amazing. It really is zero G, we went up in an aircraft and we were zero G for 3-4 seconds and we did it 64 times it was beautiful. That’s why it looks the way it does, it’s real.
The Mummy is in cinemas now through Universal Pictures Australia.
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