Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz are reuniting for another “Mummy” movie.
Filmmakers Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett, who call themselves Radio Silence, are set to direct the fourth film. Bettinelli-Olpin and Gillett are best known for 2019’s “Ready or Not” and reviving the “Scream” franchise for Paramount in 2022.
Universal, the studio behind the original monster movies, had no comment.
Fraser led the 1999 reboot of “The Mummy,” which co-starred Weisz and became a box office hit. The blockbuster also cemented Fraser as a bankable action hero. He returned for two sequels, 2001’s “The Mummy Returns” and 2008’s “The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor,” though Weisz only appeared in the former. Universal attempted to resurrect “The Mummy” with Tom Cruise in 2017, but to no avail. The film was a box office flop and failed to kick off the studio’s so-called “Dark Universe,” which was intended to be a series of interconnected adventures with Universal’s classic monsters.
After stepping away from Hollywood for a while, Fraser enjoyed a major career comeback with 2022’s “The Whale” for which he earned the Oscar for best actor. He told Variety a few years ago that he’d be open to returning to his most popular role, as adventurer Rick O’Connell, in “The Mummy.”
“I don’t know how it would work,” he said at the time. “But I’d be open to it, if someone came up with the right conceit.”
Fraser at least has an idea of what won’t work. He dissected in 2022 why Cruise’s take on “The Mummy” failed to connect with audiences. “It is hard to make that movie,” Fraser said. “The ingredient that we had going for our ‘Mummy,’ which I didn’t see in the new one, was fun. That was what was lacking in that incarnation. It was too much of a straight-ahead horror movie. ‘The Mummy’ should be a thrill ride, but not terrifying and scary.”
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From Variety US