20 Mummy T-Shirts: Could Mummies Be the Next Undead Trend?

First it was vampires: Twilight, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, etc. Then it was zombies: The Walking Dead, World War Z, etc. Makes you wonder what the next trendy horror creature will be. Sticking with the undead, a safe bet is that it’d be mummies.

This summer, we’ve got a reboot of The Mummy kicking off blockbuster season. Tom Cruise is taking over for Brendan Frazier, and now we have a mummy queen with Sofia Boutella. Say what you will about Tom Cruise (I know I have), but he’s had a good track record with summer blockbusters (can I note here how surprisingly awesome Edge of Tomorrow was, even though the name sounds like a soap opera). Looks like Universal has hope that this will be their next big franchise.

That’s one reason I believe we’re about to enter generation mummy. The other is that after almost 30 years, Anne Rice is publishing the long-awaited sequel to The Mummy, or Ramses the Damned… well, at least I’ve been waiting for it. For those of you who don’t know, while Anne Rice was having great success with vampires and witches, she tried her hand at mummies. A similar, Egyptian pharaoh raised from the dead story line. I thought it worked, and she closed the book on a cliffhanger, but alas… no conclusion.

It was recently announced that she and her son, Christopher Rice, are co-authoring the sequel, Ramses the Damned: The Passion of Cleopatra. Do I detect another female mummy? And if this does well, will the series continue like Anne Rice’s vampire books have?

Though The Mummy is a classic Universal Monster character, it always felt at the bottom of the totem pole to Dracula, Frankenstein and The Werewolf. And where vampires and werewolves and zombie have shown up in other properties, you don’t see too many mummies in horror TV shows, and if so, it’s usually a one episode run. Like in Doctor Who…

Not that mummies can’t hold their own. The 1932 original spawned four sequels and one Abbot & Costello meet-up.

The 1999 reboot not only spawned two sequels, but the entire Scorpion King series as well. So people do like those wrapped up queens and pharaohs.

So how long before a television series or two, as well as more books and movies? Should I start working on mash-up: The Mummy Goes to Mansfield Park now?

Let’s all meet back here a year from now and see if mummies are the new zombies. Or did the franchise, uhm, unravel. But before some of us get sick of these well-kept corpses, check out these very cool mummy shirts, that even your mother would love!