The story trailers tell: an archaeology of promotional campaigns for The Mummy (2017-1932)

The stories trailers tell: an archaeology of promotional campaigns for The Mummy (2017-1932)
Keywords: Franchise Marketing and Promotion; Trailers; Film websites; Paratext
Universal Pictures’s promotional campaign for the remake of The Mummy (2017) bore all the hallmarks of a successful established franchise. In parallel with Alien Day (April 26th), Star War’s May 4th (be with you), May 20 was designated ‘Mummy Day’ and celebrations were attended by the film’s director, Alex Kurtzman and stars, who gathered together to witness the unveiling of a 75-foot replica sarcophagus of Princess Ahmanet’s tomb at the Hollywood and Highland complex in Los Angeles, reputedly weighing 7 tons that were ported to the destination by 18 wide load tractor trailers (Duran 2017). and a pop-up Zero Gravity VR ‘experience’.
The film opened in more than 60 countries and fared well, however back home it was a flop. On Rotten Tomatoes the film scored an average rating of 2.8 stars out of 5, and the film critics didn’t mince their words either, declaring The Mummy to be ‘one of the year’s worst films’ (Lopez, 2017), ‘an utter bore’ (Sims, 2017) and ‘stunningly bad’ (Jenkins, 2017). Various explanations for the film’s failure at the box office were offered up in the press: Alex Kurtzman was an inexperienced director; Tom Cruise was an overly controlling star; and the film’s horror credentials were diluted with action - adventure genre tropes. But do these accounts really explain why the film fell short, or were other factors at play?
Given that promotion expenditure on the 2017 version of The Mummy was reported to be nearly half the film’s production budget, this chapter argues that promotion should be regarded as an integral component of the film.


Historically film promotional material has been regarded as ephemeral commercial text, of little intrinsic interest in itself. But there is a growing body of scholarship asserting that it’s much more than this. It has been argued that promotion acts as a ‘threshold’ through which we pass on the way to consuming a film and that it whets audience appetites, as well as conditioning a film’s reception (Gray, 2010). It is asserted that promotion plays a key role in the film industry as a ‘discursive frame,’ shaping the meaning of films too (Phillips, 2018). And perhaps most pertinent to this investigation, it has been suggested that promotional trailers are ‘revelatory’ texts that provide insights into the film industry at a particular historical moment, as well as to the films themselves (Johnston, 2009).
Adopting these propositions, the chapter sets out to discover what went so wrong by undertaking an archaeological excavation of the film’s promotion, as well as promotion in previous cycles of Mummy films. Film trailers are situated within their historical industrial contexts: Universal Studios (1930s-40s), Hammer Studios (1950s-70s), blockbusters (1970s -1990s) and franchise cinema today. Then, in the light of this contextual mapping, textual analysis of the films’ trailers can start to uncover what stories trailers tell. Consideration will be given to the changing conventions of star display, the horror genre, innovative technologies, and the evolution of film promotion strategies.
Given that promotion expenditure on the 2017 version of The Mummy was reported to be nearly half the film’s production budget, this chapter argues that promotion should be regarded as an integral component of the film. Based on an analysis of the campaigns, this chapter concludes that, whilst the reasons cited in the press may have contributed to the failure of the film, the fundamental problem was the presumption that it would establish a new franchise regardless of its reception, and concludes that it is the industry’s prevailing business models which have become the real ‘gods and monsters’ here.