The following contains spoilers for The Mummy.
We know that Tom Cruise's The Mummy is the first installment in a larger movie universe but as it turns out, that universe may expand further than we thought. While the Drak Universe is set to include The Bride of Frankenstein, The Invisible Man and The Creature From The Black Lagoon, an easter egg dropped into the film would seem to indicate that it also includes the trilogy of Mummy films that starred Brendan Fraser from the late 90s and early 2000s. The Book of the Dead, or maybe it was The Book of Life, makes an appearance during a key action sequence in the film.
About mid-way through the new version of The Mummy, the audience is introduced to the Prodigium, the organization led by Russell Crowe's Dr. Jekyll which exists to deal with the evil and monsters of the world. It's the major world building sequence that will likely be used to help tie the Dark Universe movies together going forward. Eventually, however, things go south as Jekyll transforms into Mr. Hyde, the building goes into lockdown to protect itself from Hyde, but Tom Cruise's character of Nick Morton ends up on the wrong side of the door and a fight begins. Annabelle Wallis' Jenny Halsey tries to get back into the room to help Morton, but one of the Prodigium's other members repeatedly tries to stop her so she won't get hurt. At one point, to fight him off, Halsey grabs a large book off a shelf and hits the guy with it, before dropping it to the ground. The book will look familiar to fans of the 1999 flick The Mummy.
The large star shaped lock is hard to miss, so it's clear that the easter egg is intentional. Both the Book of the Dead and the Book of Life from the previous Mummy film look close to identical, so it's hard to say which book this one is supposed to be, if it even matters. More than likely this is nothing more than an easter egg shout out to fans of the previous Mummy franchise. Still, since the previous films took place much earlier in time, it's technically possible that the events of those films could have taken place prior to the events of the new Mummy movie. It's been decades. Maybe the discovery of the first Mummy led to the establishment of the Prodigium in the first place?
If you're going to check out The Mummy this weekend, keep your eyes open for this easter egg, as well as a few other references to upcoming Dark Universe films.
