Rick and Evi O’Connell are gearing up to raid more tombs.
Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz have both signed on to star in a fourth Mummy film, Variety reported Tuesday, November 4.
The long-awaited sequel will be helmed by Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett, co-founders of the Radio Silence filmmaking collective, who directed two entries in the rebooted Scream franchise as well as Ready or Not and Abigail.
Writer-director Stephen Sommers reintroduced audiences to Egypt’s bandaged horror—a staple of the Universal Monsters catalogue—in 1999 via a swashbuckling, Indiana Jones-type adventure that grossed over $400 million at the global box office. Sommers returned for a sequel, The Mummy Returns, which released in 2001 and netted $443 million globally.
A third entry subtitled Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, arrived in 2008 by way of The Fast and the Furious alum, Rob Cohen. Fraser returned to play Rick, but Weisz was recast with Maria Bello. Still, hype for the movie, which moved the action from Egypt to China, was incredibly high, yielding just over $400 million at the box office. The franchise also inspired a spinoff series centered around the Scorpion King.
What will The Mummy 4 be about?
There are no Mummy 4 plot details available at this time and Universal had no comment for Variety.
Universal Pictures attempted to reboot the property in 2017 as part of its now-defunct Dark Universe initiative. Fronted by Tom Cruise and directed by Alex Kurtzman, the failed attempt at kickstarting a shared cinematic mythos based on the studio’s classic monsters still grossed $400 million against a $125 million budget.
Speaking with SYFY WIRE in recent years, Sommers exclusively shared how he would like to bring The Mummy back to the big screen if given the chance.
“To me, it has to be [in Egypt],” he told us in March 2023. “It doesn’t have to all be in Egypt. That’s why with the sequel … the beginning starts off in Ancient Egypt and then we go to London for the whole first act. And it’s very adventurous. [I thought] London at night and all this stuff could be very adventurous and fun, but we have to get back to Egypt. Like Tarzan movies, you want him to be in the jungle.”
A competing Mummy picture is currently much farther along at Warner Bros. from Evil Dead Rise director, Lee Cronin. Jason Blum and James Wan are producing via their joined Blumhouse and Atomic Monster banners.
(SYFY and Universal Pictures are both part of the NBCUniversal family)
