“There was a lot of debate about whether or not to put Dr. Jekyll in the movie,” Kurtzman began, “because the minute you say ‘Oh, it’s
The Mummy, but also Dr. Jekyll’s in it,’ you guys are all going to say ‘are you trying to sell me on a shared universe all of a sudden?’ Which seemed a reasonable question. In the footage shown to Nerdist and a few other outlets, Dr. Jekyll introduces
Tom Cruise‘s Nick Morton to Prodigium, the clandestine, monster-finding organization which will likely be the S.H.I.E.L.D. of the universe.
“We wanted to understand the context of the Mummy in the larger world,” he continued, “and we wanted to explore that monsters have existed for millennia, and we knew as the story evolved we wanted there to be an organization that was maybe cataloging them, following them, collecting them.” By necessity, then, there needed to be someone who understood that world, and could bring Morton into it. “We could make up a character to fit that role,” Kurtzman continued, “or we could look at monster mythology and say ‘is there a character who could organically fit into
The Mummy story, that wouldn’t detract from
The Mummy story, but would in fact enhance it?'”