AMBIGUOUS UPDATE! Universal to Vic Armstrong’s Mummy blog: that’s a wrap!

Back in August, director Rob Cohen started a blog to chronicle his progress on next summer’s CGI-fest The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor. I felt conflicted about this at the time, because although I’m not a big fan of Cohen’s work – and far less so of the Mummy movies – I am a huge fan of blogging filmmakers and the stories that they can tell through this medium. What’s more, Cohen’s site provided us with a link to another blog, that of stuntman/action unit director Vic Armstrong. While Armstrong’s journal site didn’t exactly burn up the RSS feedreaders with copious updates, I did quite enjoy his anecdotal posts and photographs. This is a guy who’s been in the movie business for more than 30 years, stunt-doubling some of our most classic and beloved cinematic heroes. He’s got a rich history, likely thousands of great stories, and the years and mileage to back it all up.

So naturally, Universal doesn’t want him to blog about their Mummy movie anymore. From Armstrong’s site today:

Hi everybody, Universal Studios and our producers would prefer to handle any blogs re “MUMMY 3″. Unfortunately the work load I have now is such that it would not be practical for me to go through that process. So any info or blogs regarding the “MUMMY 3″ shoot will come from the Studios or Rob’s (Cohen) excellent website.

In fact, he probably is too busy to blog, so what exactly is the studio so worried about him writing? Armstrong doesn’t provide any clues as to Universal’s reasoning, but he does imply that the studio would prefer a more regimented, controlled process, most likely so that they can determine how to “message” the movie and “position” all official communication that gets out into the hands of the unwashed public. It’s all a bit silly and backward; the movie studios seem to believe that they’re still the supreme and only controllers of information – an attitude that’s about as fresh as a dead emperor’s tomb.

And as an aside, how strange is it that 2008 will see the release of sequels from both the Mummy as well as from the 27-year-old franchise from which it was entirely ripped off?

AMBIGUOUS UPDATE! Armstrong’s post linked above has been removed and he’s placed a new post up today claiming that:

…it appears there may have been some misunderstanding regarding my blogs. Once I have cleared everything up I will give you some more news.

Are the Universal Blog Cops taking this to the next level or is a massive movie marketing muck-up in the works…? I simply can’t wait to find out!

AND AGAIN! Armstrong updates the kerfuffle once more, telling us that it was all a misunderstanding. All is right in the world of silly, overblown sequels again.