Tom Cruise’s Zero-G Stunt In The Mummy Took 64 Takes, New Poster Debuts

This Sunday, Universal Pictures will debut the second trailer for The Mummy, and according to those who’ve already seen it at CinemaCon, it’s one hell of a preview, boasting epic action, an intriguing mystery and some truly terrifying moments. Now, to build up a bit more hype before the footage arrives, the studio has debuted a brand new poster which you can check out down below.

Featuring Sofia Boutella, or half of her face, at least, it’s a chilling one-sheet that teases the horror that’s headed our way. Simple, effective and menacing, it promises terror in large doses when the film opens this June, a month which will see it battle for box office supremacy against Warner Bros.’ Wonder Woman, which releases just one week before. Will it be able to pull enough eyeballs away from the Gal Gadot-led tentpole to make a dent? We sure hope so.

After all, The Mummy is the latest attempt to kick off Universal’s Monsters Universe, after several failed starts, so you can bet the studio is hoping that Alex Kurtzman’s upcoming film can get the job done. At the very least, it should be a pretty entertaining ride, as the first trailer teased some fantastic set pieces, including a zero-gravity plane crash. It’s that scene which has had a lot of people talking, even getting its own featurette (which can be seen above), and while doing press at CinemaCon this week, Kurtzman revealed a little bit more about it.

Talking to Variety, the director noted that a “lot of barfing” took place during filming of the sequence and in order to get it just right, Cruise did 64 different takes, shooting the scene over “two days and four high-altitude parabolic flights.” That is, an aircraft that performs a zero gravity maneuver mid-flight to recreate the experience of weightlessness.

It’s a technique often employed by NASA when training astronauts – hence the nickname “Vomit Comet” – but the fact that The Mummy‘s crew retrofitted the aircraft’s interior to create a full-blown movie set is really a showcase of Alex Kurtzman’s ambition. The end result is arguably one of the more impressive action sequences in recent memory – Tom Cruise is involved, after all – and here’s hoping that the rest of Kurtzman’s monstrous reboot can live up to the hype.

The Mummy will open on June 9th.