Tom Cruise Refused to Kiss His British Costar in Front of 900 People — It Didn’t Fit the $410 Million Film
Annabelle Wallis says Tom Cruise vetoed their planned kiss on The Mummy, turning her big moment into an awkward on-set shut-down she later recounted on Conan — a fitting snapshot of a production that stumbled from day one to box-office bust.
Remember Universal's 2017 The Mummy? Not the Brendan Fraser classic — the Tom Cruise one with Annabelle Wallis. It was supposed to launch a whole monster-verse and instead face-planted. Now Wallis has shared a pretty telling on-set story: the day Tom Cruise decided their big kiss… was not happening.
The kiss that wasn’t (and the 900 people who watched it disappear)
Wallis told Conan that she was genuinely excited for a scripted kissing scene — the kind of thing you expect when you are literally playing the lead's love interest. Then Cruise changed his mind, in front of a crowd.
"I arrive on set and am like c'mon Tom, it's about to be the best day of your life. And then he goes, 'Yeah about that. Alex, can we have a chat? I'm not feeling that. I'm not feeling the kissing scene.' And he talked himself out of kissing me in front of 900 people. Can you imagine what I felt like? Not good."
Awkward, to put it mildly. In a movie already starving for chemistry, pulling the plug on the kiss did not help.
This was supposed to kick off a franchise
The Mummy was designed as ground zero for Universal's planned Dark Universe — a glossy, modern spin on the classic monsters, teed up right in the film with Russell Crowe's Dr. Jekyll. On paper, anchoring all that to Tom Cruise sounded like a safe bet. In practice, the movie underwhelmed commercially and critically, topping out at about $410 million worldwide against a hefty $125–$195 million budget, before marketing. Not a total flop, but nowhere near the launchpad the studio wanted.
Quick facts
- Title: The Mummy (2017)
- Director: Alex Kurtzman
- Writers: David Koepp, Christopher McQuarrie, Dylan Kussman
- Main star: Tom Cruise as Nick Morton
- Other key cast: Sofia Boutella, Annabelle Wallis, Russell Crowe, Jake Johnson
- Genre: Action, adventure, horror
- Country/language: United States, English
- Runtime: About 110 minutes
- Production: Universal Pictures, Dark Universe (banner), and others
- Budget: Approximately $125–$195 million
- Worldwide box office: About $410 million (Box Office Mojo)
- Setting: Mostly modern-day Iraq and London
The chemistry problem (and why it mattered)
One of the big knocks on the movie: there is just no spark between Cruise and Wallis. That stings harder when you remember how electric Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz were in the 1999 version. Despite heavy-hitter writers on the script, the intimate beats feel stiff, like they were grafted in from a different movie.
Wallis — who has real presence in Peaky Blinders and The Tudors — gets boxed into exposition and reaction shots, with little room to build a character. A lot of reviews landed on the same note: she had the chops, the film gave her not much to play. Meanwhile, Cruise's considerable influence leans the whole thing toward relentless action and away from character and romance. If you are rebooting a property that used to mix swashbuckling with smolder, that imbalance is a problem.
To be fair: he did save her life
The on-set dynamics were not all bad. Wallis has also said Cruise saved her life during a zero-gravity plane stunt that went sideways. So, no kiss, but yes, a rescue. Hollywood giveth and taketh.
Where to watch
The Mummy is currently streaming on Netflix and Prime Video, if you want to revisit the curious first (and last) chapter of Universal's would-be Dark Universe.