Sometimes, a piece of entertainment news will be so beautiful, it genuinely takes you by surprise. For an entire generation of chronically-online movie buffs, one of those pieces of news arrived on Tuesday: Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz are reuniting for a new The Mummy movie.
On Tuesday, it was announced that a new The Mummy movie is in the works at Universal. The new film will be directed by the filmmaking team of Radio Silence (also known as Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett), whose work includes Ready or Not, Abigail, and Scream and Scream VI. Instead of a brand-new take on the franchise, which was most recently attempted with a deathly-gritty Tom Cruise-led reboot in 2017, the film will be a continuation of the canon of Fraser and Weisz’s first two films, 1998’s The Mummy and 2001’s The Mummy Returns. (The events of 2008’s The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, which saw Mario Bello replacing Weisz as Evelyn O’Connell, will reportedly be ignored.)
It is unclear at this point who else from the films’ ensemble cast, which included Oded Fehr and John Hannah, could return. It will also be interesting to see if and how Alex O’Connell, the son of Fraser’s Rick and Weisz’s Evelyn, might appear in the new film. He was previously portrayed by Freddie Boath in The Mummy Returns and Luke Ford in Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, so possibilities could include bringing either of them back to reprise the role, writing him out offscreen a la Indiana Jones‘ Mutt Williams, or stunt casting a new actor. (Maybe David Corenswet can clear his schedule after filming Man of Tomorrow.)
We deserve this!
Fraser and Weisz’s The Mummy films were massively popular for Universal upon their release, spawning a number of spinoffs (including one of Dwayne Johnson’s early franchise roles in The Scorpion King), an animated series, and a theme park ride. Sure, they played fast and loose with the existing lore of the classic Universal Monsters version of The Mummy, but they delivered plenty of swashbuckling action and adorable romance between Rick and Evelyn along the way.
In the decades since The Mummy Returns, the saga of those original films has only gotten more beloved: not only because they’re so fun, but because action-adventure and sweeping romance have gotten more sanitized in recent blockbusters. We’ve gotten tribute songs. We’ve gotten the best Super Yaki bumper sticker. The film has been credited as being responsible for countless people’s bisexual awakenings, thanks to Fraser and Weisz’s onscreen chemistry and their characters’ infectious energy towards life and adventure.
While we still know next-to-nothing about this new The Mummy movie, it already feels like more than the nostalgia-driven legacy sequels and remakes that are abundant in our current entertainment landscape. There’s a sense of unfinished business here: because Weisz didn’t return for Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, because Fraser has (deservedly) gotten his flowers during his recent career renaissance, and because few recent movies have been able to capture the exact energy that The Mummy delivered back in the late ’90s. In the hands of Radio Silence, a directing team who has proven to be uniquely skilled at blending modern horror and comedy, this film has the potential to be so special.
(featured image: Universal Pictures)
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