Director Rob Cohen has been keeping readers up to date on the production of The Mummy 3: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor and for a while it seemed the movie was moving along perfectly. The action sequences sounded cool, the cast was giving the movie fair praise, and even the loss of Rachel Weisz seemed like a hurdle the movie was prepared to jump. I guess things couldn’t stay perfect forever however.
It looks like The Mummy 3 has taken its first misstep, and it’s a doozy – in fact, it’s possibly one of the worst bad steps a movie can make – the advertising. The first poster for the film has been seen at ShoWest and it’s making fans everywhere shout: Mortal Kombat! Yes, the poster for the third movie in the Mummy saga definitely looks like it belongs to another franchise, as you can see to the right.
There are probably worse mistakes a movie can make than a bad poster, and I’m sure Universal’s marketing department thought they were making a good decision, keying in on the Eastern aspect of the film’s story with the dragon iconography. I don’t think there’s a single person who wouldn’t connect this with Mortal Kombat over The Mummy, however… at least nobody other than Universal’s marketing team. Hopefully someone will realize the potential for audience loss right away and will come up with a stronger means to advertise The Mummy 3, due out later this year.
Check out a larger version of the poster over at Filmz.ru, which we found through Bloody-Disgusting (although there’s really not much more to see than our shrunken down version).
