Russell Crowe
Russell Crowe will join long-time friend Tom Cruise for the reboot Dave J Hogan/Getty Images for Paramount Pictures International

Russell Crowe has announced that he will be joining the star cast of the remake of the 1999 Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz-starrer The Mummy. The Aussie actor will join Tom Cruise, Sofia Boutella, Annabelle Wallis, Jake Johnson, Marwan Kenzari and Courtney B Vance for the reboot, which is being directed by Alex Kurtzman (screen writer of Transformers).

"I'm gonna do it," Crowe told members of the press at a Beverly Hilton round-table. "Those kind of creative collaborative conversations, if they're explosive like that from the first time you start talking, you're actually into a really good place," Crowe said about the project. "How they've pulled all of this stuff forward into a contemporary world, and how they build it out from there, and how all the other characters interweave in each other's stories, mate, it's fantastic.

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"This one is kind of more designed to seriously scare the s**t out of you."

The Gladiator actor informed that he will be playing the role of Dr Henry Jekyll, Fellow of the Royal Society, opposite Cruise, who plays a Navy Seal on a mission to root out terrorists in the Iraqi desert.

According to the film synopsis released by Universal, Cruise (and probably Crowe) will be tasked with fighting the resurrected evil ancient queen played by Boutella.

Crowe and Cruise have a longstanding friendship, which goes back to when the Mission Impossible actor was married to Nicole Kidman. During the press event, Crowe joked: "When he got a divorce I was part of the settlement package and I went to Nicole."

The Mummy is set to hit cinemas by 9 June 2017. Crowe's upcoming film The Nice Guys alongside Ryan Gosling will release on 20 May 2016.