The Making of Lee Cronin's The Mummy (2026) | The Making Of Podcast

Added: 2026-05-12

[00:00:04]Hello and welcome to another episode of The Making of I'm your host Mike Valinsky and today I'm excited to welcome Lee Cronin. Lee is the writer and director of the brand new hit film The Mummy. The film is Killing It at the theater and I thought we could invite Lee on to hear about his career, the making of The Mummy, his creative process, and much more. However, before we dive in, we'd like to thank our friends at AJA Video Systems, Broadfield Distributing, OWC, and Zeiss. Now, on to the main show. Lee, good morning.

[00:00:36]>> Hey, Mike. How are you >> doing? Good. Excited to have you on the show. We really appreciate it. Um, >> my pleasure. My pleasure.

[00:00:44]>> Yeah. So, congrats on the Mummy. It's doing incredibly well. the numbers are just off the charts and I think it's going to keep growing uh probably this weekend. So, um >> I do hope so. I do hope so. It's always the game.

[00:00:58]>> Well, we'll do all we can to help the uh help that >> um so let me just jump in and ask you uh where did this idea come from? How did you write it? How did you develop the project?

[00:01:11]>> Yeah. Um, it started, uh, I I finished making my previous movie, Evil Dead Rise, and the conversation about a Mummy movie had started before the release of Evil Dead Rise, cuz there was quite a long journey from finishing that movie to when it was released, finding the right release date for it. Thankfully, we did find the right release date. But it was a kind of an oddity or an odd experience because I'd finished the movie in in early August of 2022, but it wasn't released until April of 2023.

[00:01:41]Very different to this movie, which is just out in theaters, and I finished like four or five weeks ago. Um, so two very different experiences, but I was developing a couple of different projects. um things that I had originals from my own my own desk and um there was good word of mouth within the industry about what Evil Dead Rise uh how it was, what it was like, how people thought it would do. So, I started having a discussion um about what movies I wanted to make with James Juan and and one of the things that he raised was, you know, The Mummy. What what do you think about The Mummy? And the truth is, I was like, I I don't really think about it a whole lot. Um it's uh you know there's some great movies out there. There's different tonalities. They span uh cinema history, you know, in in in terms of like you know how how far back we go with the with the making of movies around this particular monster creature piece of piece of lore and actually like history. Um and he said, "Well, what about a really scary mummy movie?" And that kind of got me thinking. Um and that was really that was that was the extent of the engagement at that point.

[00:02:45]And then I let it kind of spin around in my head in the background whilst I was again working on some other projects for a short period of time. And then it kept kind of coming back to me and I kept thinking about how could I make a film like what I'm always looking for is in terms of the next thing like what are the things I want to do on a personal level. I wanted to tell a story in a bigger canvas not as contained as my previous two feature films. I wanted to bring in I knew I wanted something that had a mystery etc. And I started to bring that around this concept of a mummy um or a mummy movie and and then thinking about, you know, typically if you ask somebody what do you think of when you think of the mummy or a mummy they will think of if they think of a movie they might think of the kind of action adventure style. If they think of from a historical point of view they'll think of a pharaoh they'll think of a golden sarcophagus. They'll think of you know those type of images. And I thought about, well, what if there was a a purpose for mummification that was different? What if and what if that could happen to a loved one? And what if that loved one was from the here and now as opposed to thousands of years ago?

[00:03:52]And that then creates the why and to go looking for for answers. And those answers led me down the pathway of the story of this movie around a missing girl um and the mystery and terror that is attached to her um when she's rediscovered inside this 3,000-y old sarcophagus.

[00:04:11]>> There you go. Um so how did you start writing it? I mean, can you tell us uh your process and how long it took?

[00:04:18]>> Yeah, it to it took a a lot of a lot of the writing process for me is thinking and talking. Um, and I've said this before and I'll say it again. And when I start to say it, it always sounds arrogant. And then when I'm by the time I'm finished the sentence less so.

[00:04:30]Writing is not difficult, but knowing what to write, I find really, really hard as in what to focus on, where to put my attention, how to carve out a story. So, it started with the idea mummification for a different purpose um around a loved one. And then I started to think about the circumstances for that, which led me to this concept of a kidnapping. So all of this was discussion really talking to people that I trust. Um just letting it bounce around the the four walls of my head. Um and and that that process probably, you know, went on for a couple of months until in in late um 2023. I felt ready to actually take all of these concepts and try and break a story. um which a trusted colleague and friend of mine just rented a house for a week with these these basic kind of pillars and and just kind of talked all day and wrote things down. I t kind of tend to work in the large format. So we had a big flip chart and we just throw ideas down that we can look at all day or make some lunch, walk away, go for a hike, come back, have a whiskey, whatever.

[00:05:34]just keep but but make it the major focus almost 24 hours a day just thinking thinking talking talking and came out of that process with the rough shape of a movie which is still very unbalanced still lacking certain ideas and then from there I usually would take it or in this con in in this particular case I took it to um to to you know cards as opposed to like writing an outline and and then spread that out large and lots of scene ideas and things and moving the puzzle pieces around until it feels close enough to be transcribed for me onto like a digital beatboard that I then use and then I open up the script and and you know blank page. I don't really I never have really been one for like outlining or treatments like I have done them. Um, but I I tend to more it's it's a combination of discussions and ongoing discussions even when I start writing.

[00:06:28]And then I guess all of that led me to uh jumping into the first draft. I'm going to say it was kind of like mid January of 2024.

[00:06:38]Um, and then I probably had a first draft probably late maybe late March, something like that. So, you know, probably like 10 weeks later. Um, but my first drafts usually I actually looked at it the other day. I'd written 20s something unfinished drafts to get to that first draft. A lot of people are I don't have this ability to just write through the problems. If I hit a problem, I tend to reanalyze everything, come at it again and often go back to the start and keep sweeping back through the material over and over and over again. Um, which usually leads to a pretty robust first draft. So much so actually I guess the first draft was close to maybe there was a few revisions but close to what we had green lit by by I think May of 2024. Um so and that yeah that's very much my process. So in in some respects it probably from it was it was around the release of Evil Dead in April 23 where I not fully committed to the project but thought okay I'm going to I'm going to hunt this down. So, it's probably a year from just thinking to to to kind of a green light um and and and a more intense maybe four four or five months of the second half of that that process that that got it kind of ready for people to be able to get behind it and and and put a budget behind it.

[00:07:57]>> Terrific. So, let's kind of go from the writing process to directing if we can.

[00:08:02]You know, the craft that >> did you storyboard?

[00:08:06]take us take us there and then if you can just share a little bit working with your cinematographer obviously uh that's super important part of the process.

[00:08:14]>> Yeah, it was I'm I'm three movies deep now. Um three feature films deep and each one has been a little different.

[00:08:21]There's similarities in the process. So with this one it was about Yeah, it was I remember we got a green light when the can film festival was on. Uh Mike Duca was in can when I know Jason Blum talked to him and and the movie was was green and we had a date which was really kind of important. Um and that date was essentially where we now yeah we had like from there whatever May May 24th till we knew we were releasing net just just recently in April of 26 which might sound like a lot of time but the script wasn't there yet. So the next phase of that process was really through the second half of 2024 was focusing in on on revisions of that script um and studio notes and all of those things which were not like super aggressive or like wasn't a taxing process but again there's always great improvements you can make and I will say like thanks for the notes and lots of these are applicable but I also have a bunch of my own notes that are keeping me awake at night so I'll tend to dig in and recraft and recraft um and by the time we kind of hit September of that year, which was not that long since the May, we knew we were going to start official prep like the first working day of January in 2025. So by the September, I was boots on the ground in Spain looking in Almaria in southern Spain looking for locations that could double for both Egypt and New Mexico. Um, didn't have to really scout so much in Ireland yet cuz we were building in studio in Ireland.

[00:09:47]Um, but I would have had my production designer Nick Basset and my cinematographer Dave Garbett, both of who I built a relationship, creative relationship with on Evil Dead Rise. So, they came over a couple of times, go to Spain, we'd look, we'd scout, we'd come back to Ireland, we'd visit some museums, we'd sit down, we'd try and like early things like just trying to figure out what the family house is cuz it's a big location in the movie and trying to put all those puzzle pieces together and it's kind of strange that time just evaporates incredibly fast.

[00:10:14]You think, "Oh, we're green lit. It's May and I've got the Christmas break."

[00:10:17]And you went into Christmas break going, I feel miles behind where I want to be in the process. Like, I don't feel in any way ready to, you know, to be in official prep come January. Um, and then during that process, I engaged my storyboard artist who I worked with on my last movies as well. But what was different was because we built up a a shorthand, I was a lot less hands-on with the storyboards. I was able to brief a little more. My scripts are usually pretty descriptively accurate for how I wanted shot by shot. Doesn't talk camera angles so much or anything like that, but the way that I write is is quite refined and defines like you could hand it to storyboard artist, say nothing, and he could put together something that might be 70% of the journey to where I want to take it. But prep, it was a complicated movie, you know, with two crews in two countries. And prep got really intense from from the jump once we hit January.

[00:11:11]So, I never really got to revise the storyboard. So, I was really working with this first draft of a of a drawn version of the movie. And from there, myself and Dave Garbbert, my cinematographer, a lot of times we'll just talk about the operating principles of scenes, like the overall look obviously for the movie, the taste choices. cuz we knew we wanted it to be quite grounded in certain ways. As is always the case with me and Nick, we want like lots of texture, lots of variety, lots of layers of history. Um, and weirdly before we knew it, we were just on the doorstep of shooting. And the storyboards had informed us. We had like a war room where we'd have them on the wall, but we never really that was in the studio. We never really took those boards that frequently to the set once we started shooting. And we shot the whole movie kind of without a shot list, which is not how I would usually work at all. Um, but this one, for some reason, it just they it finds its form and this was the way that it worked. And we were making a lot of discoveries, but it was the big choices in the prep that we did. We didn't walk into a room and go, where are we going to put the camera? We knew exactly where we were going to put the camera, but until we felt our way in, we might go, you know what, it' be great to actually use this this certain type of lens we use in this other scene. We didn't think about that before. So, we had this little bit of wiggle room to explore and play. Um, and I think a little bit of it as well is there's quite a lot of drama in this film. As much as there is the movie's been received as being incredibly terrifying and incredibly gory, which it is, but there is also quite a lot of drama. And for me, I didn't want to over rehearse any of that or or overlock it in a way.

[00:12:43]And I wanted there to be opportunities for discovery. But we we'd set the sets and the lighting and the design in a way that we could kind of go anywhere we wanted inside that playground, which was which was really great.

[00:12:55]>> And were there any inspirations for you?

[00:12:57]I didn't ask you in the beginning.

[00:12:59]Usually I like to ask guests uh movies that really got them going when they're a kid or growing up, but for this film in particular, any references just in the back of your back of your mind?

[00:13:10]Yeah, I think um I think Poltergeist was one um because it's a story about a missing kid who's missing essentially inside her own home. And this is about a missing kid who's, you know, now a young woman and is brought home, but there's doubt in the air. You know, what happened to her? Why did it happen to her? Why is she behaving like this? And then some of the domestic levity that I wanted in the film as well. So even in these darker moments in even in in in the real world in life there's often it's not that there's brightness but there's levity or oddness or or something else like as I'll say you can you know people laugh at funerals and people laugh at inappropriate times. So looking at at at that and obviously the the kind of visual control of that movie and the domestic setting and then the other film as well was Seven um because it's a movie that I adore and it's got quite a you know you could you could you could classify seven as much as it's a thriller in some respects as a horror movie. There is some horrific kind of body horroresque moments in that and myself, my designer Nick Basset, I remember it was like the only movie we watched together in the buildup was seven was re-released in the January in IMAX and we went to watch it and had a couple of beers and broke it down a little bit afterwards and actually one of the things about it going I'd never seen it in the big screen watching with a with an audience was there's a lot of laughter in that movie. There is a lot of levity and just little kind of moments. So um so they were the two kind of movies and I knew obviously it's a movie that has possession elements. It has a female a younger female in it. So I knew there'd be some comparisons the to the Exorcist which have come out now but it wasn't something I thought about heavily or revisited. It's a movie that I know really well. You know it's one of my favorite horror movies of all time.

[00:14:45]But yeah, I think that those two films um were the ones that we would have kind of just referenced from time to time as we went and you know where we I would have pulled up in certain meetings maybe like a clip from those movies to talk about camera movement or lighting or the quality of a prosthetic, you know, those type of things. Um especially in seven like you know a couple of the dead bodies and the dude on the bed and all of that stuff kind of played a part. You know, I want to ask since you're doing such great work in the field of horror.

[00:15:15]Um, I'm a horror guy. So, I wanted to ask you, you know, crafting horror, creating suspense, thriller, scares, dread.

[00:15:27]What's your thoughts on that? Because I mean, for for the upandcomers, for the students, for the people newer that look up to what you're doing and people like you, how do you how do you personally craft horror?

[00:15:39]I think it has to come first of all from a place that you believe in what you're doing for a scene or for a sequence or for the bigger story. To me, some level of authenticity and a world is really, really important. Um, and that world doesn't have to necessarily reflect exactly the behaviors of the real world or what you might think you do in a situation. It has to reflect the con the the the construct and the world that the characters are inhabiting. Um, so for me, the most powerful tool in in horror is always a sense of dread. And it's been really nice when people are talking about this movie online that they talk about how the dread captures them really, really early on in this film.

[00:16:19]And it's low and it's bubbling. But the dread in this movie comes from the fact that we've seen a family who've had the worst possible thing happened to them.

[00:16:28]And then we're back with this family and you can only be left wonder, oh my god, what what's going to happen to them now?

[00:16:33]They lost their daughter. Their daughter was kidnapped. So that sets kind of like a humming low level of of dread and anxiety in the story which I think are really really important. And then as I said it's about leaning into your beliefs and your authenticity to set things up. So for example, one of the things that was really important to me with this movie and I live and die by this because some people might criticize it would be why' they bring her home if she's kind of all messed up and you know all of these things. on it because they love her and because she is the answer to all of their pain despite the circumstances that she's been found in.

[00:17:08]So when you're making a horror movie, you always need a trap for your characters. If that's the cell phone tower is down, the bridge is broken, you're snowed in in the overlook, whatever it might be. In this one, it's a psychological trap for these characters. Psychologically trapped by the fact that both parents feel a burden of guilt. Um, and this is, you know, this is where I mean about authenticity.

[00:17:29]You have to have these things to talk to your actors about. You have to get inside their heads. They need to get inside the heads of your characters so that you can make them believable. And then from there, that gives you the platform to start to play your magic tricks from a from a horror perspective, to start to play around with the set pieces and the surprises and the jumps and the visceral moments and all and all of those things. So, I think in some respects to make something scary, you need to make it real first. I think that's the key and and I think I'm quite drawn to horrors about family and set in domestic circumstances because you're kind of off to the races straight away.

[00:18:08]It's a very identifiable setting. So, if I watch a horror movie about, I don't know, let's say it's a bunch of people go to an underground mine and they find a monster, I'm like, that's cool and it could be scary and jumpy, but I'm not going to go to that mine. So, it's not that's not going to keep me awake at night. But thinking about another person in another bedroom in the same home as you and you're wondering do they hate me? Even just a basic human thing or why are they angry at me or why are they behaving like this? That's when you can start to dig your fingers into primal fears and as I said and fuel that dread.

[00:18:43]And I think if you get the dread right then you can have all your spikes of jumps, scares, atmosphere, all of these other things that you can you can really start to play around with. This is a mini master class with one of the new masters of horror. Um, well, I know we have limited time, so just two final questions here.

[00:19:00]>> Um, sort of a a fun one. Your all-time favorite, let's say five horror films.

[00:19:08]>> Yeah. And I'm not going to be able to put them in order. If Jaws is my favorite movie of all time, and I classify it as a monster movie, and it has been for a very long time, and it's immovable. Um I would say um The Shining saw a very young and impressionable age.

[00:19:25]Um the film craft there's a movie as well that it's it's baldiness is what makes it brilliant, you know, in terms of like some of the the the the exaggeration of the performances and stuff like that, but you're going, "Hey, have you ever been locked in a hotel for x amount of months?" You know, Snowden, what could that do to your psychology?

[00:19:42]The Wicker Man, um and Rosemary's Baby. I kind of put those two together, although they're very different films. What I like about them is they don't rely on much more than the psychology and the dread. Um um and they both have something in common, which is you've got a central character.

[00:20:01]Everybody else is lying to them. And there's nothing really more terrifying than that. Um like if you look at Rosemary's baby, it's only her friend who tells the truth, and he gets off for that. Everyone else is is is lying the whole way. and the Wicker Man, the moment he arrives on the island, it's like there's no truth spoken until the very end of the film when he's just being stared at by a bunch of deadeyed locals. So, that's really terrifying.

[00:20:25]And then I think as well, I probably would put Evil Dead 2 in there because again, it was a movie that had a big impression on me. It's a very my my interests within the horror genre spread out far and wide. Um, and I like the the, you know, I like the psychological like if I could put Silence of the Lambs in the mix as a sixth, I would, but it's less, it is a horror movie, but less overtly so because it's it's also enormously a thriller, but in terms of of of kind of down the middle horror movies. Not that any of these are down the middle or ordinary in any way. But in terms of like definitively in the horror section on the shelf, I' I'd probably pick those five, those five movies. Those are great picks and a few of those are in my top. And uh Rosemary's Baby. Yeah, she's getting gas lit the whole the whole movie. Right.

[00:21:10]>> All the way. All the way.

[00:21:12]>> All right. Final question for the students out there for the upand cominging filmmakers.

[00:21:18]What are your recommendations for people just getting in the game?

[00:21:23]I think um start well I can you can only ever speak from your own your own position and advice can be broad and it could encompass how other people have done it but I can only speak from my own experience and the choices that I made.

[00:21:39]So once I ventured kind of out of film school where I'd done some comedy work and different things and decided that I really wanted to focus in in you know on horror movies not necessarily forever but I have a big passion for them and I knew they were a way of really entertaining and engaging people. I knew that I wanted to execute great control over the things that I did. So my focus was always on doing something achievable to the highest possible level it can be achieved. So, the first horror short that I made through the night, which was we made it, oh my goodness, it must be like 15 years ago now. Maybe even actually terrifyingly longer. Maybe like seven. Is that right? Oh my god. Yeah.

[00:22:16]16 17 years ago. But the whole idea was we only had a couple of grand. We had some people we could lean on um to help us, some good crew that that were willing to work work with us on the film. Um but it was like, let's put two people in a room. Let's make some let's make sure we have a great set. Let's make sure we have two great actors, great circumstances, great lighting, not spreading yourself so thin. Create something that feels can feel very complete and is a real signpost for where you want to go. Um, and I think treat everything you do as the last thing you might ever get to do. Um, so that it's the best work you can possibly achieve at that moment in your career as you as you grow. And then I think find your tribe. If you find people you like working with, and that doesn't mean you might grow apart stylistically. People's tastes might change. You might suddenly go, "Oh, they're they they shoot too fast. I want things to be more controlled or they they're too slow."

[00:23:10]Whatever it might be. But but finding your tribe and and like-minded people.

[00:23:15]And then supporting them and in return getting them to support you, I think, is really important.

[00:23:21]>> Great advice. Great advice. So, Lee, thanks so much for taking time today.

[00:23:25]Everybody go check out.

[00:23:28]>> Um, and I also want to thank our sponsors AJA, Broadfield, OWC, and Zeiss for all their support. Thanks a lot, Lee.

[00:23:36]>> Pleasure, Mike. Thank you so much.