The United Kingdom's advertising regulator has banned posters for Lee Cronin's horror film "The Mummy," citing that the imagery created a "realistic impression of a dead child" and was likely to distress young viewers. The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) received approximately 30 complaints after the posters were displayed on the London Underground and other billboards across the UK.
Social media attention was drawn to the controversial imagery in April, with BBC journalist Samira Ahmed among those who filed a complaint. The poster featured a grey-skinned girl with one eye partially closed, wrapped in bandages, accompanied by the tagline "Some Things Are Meant to Stay Buried." Complainants expressed that the image was too graphic and resembled a deceased child.
Warner Bros. defended the poster, asserting that the girl was depicted as a "living mummy" with a neutral expression and without any depiction of violence. However, the ASA disagreed, concluding that the recognizable human features made the figure likely to be perceived as a dead child, thus deeming the advertisements unsuitable for outdoor display.
Further complicating matters, Warner Bros. was found to have violated an agreement not to place the advertisement within 100 meters of a school, as it was visible from a nursery for young children. The ASA has instructed the studio to ensure that future marketing materials that could cause fear or distress to young children are not placed where they might be seen by them.
While the poster campaign faced this ban, other elements of "The Mummy's" advertising were not found to be in breach. A television commercial and an online version of the advert were cleared by the ASA, as they were scheduled to air after 7:30 PM, a time when younger children are less likely to be watching. The authority also dismissed concerns that the image would be unduly distressing to those who had lost a child or were concerned about the depiction in the context of global conflicts.
"The Mummy," directed by Lee Cronin, received a 7/10 review from IGN, which described the film as taking "ugly as it is amusing, Lee Cronin's The Mummy takes the kind of tonal swings you rarely see from a Hollywood studio."