Brendan Fraser was rumored to return for The Mummy 4 in 2025 after his Oscar win, but are the rumors true?
Brendan Fraser's The Mummy 4 Rumors Explained
Rumors have been spreading across social media claiming Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz are set to reprise their roles as Rick O'Connell and Evelyn Carnahan, respectively, in The Mummy 4.
The rumor was accompanied by a supposed poster for the project claiming The Mummy: Fountain of the Persian Knights will be released in 2025 from Universal.
The supposed logline promoted a tale involving Fraser's Rick O'Connell going on a search for his missing son for a "gripping tale of family, danger, and the unyielding pursuit of hope:"
"Three years after their son went missing and presumed lost on a perilous quest for the legendary fountain, a glimmer of hope emerges. Rick discovers that their son may be alive, held captive by malevolent forces. Join Universal Pictures in 2025 for a gripping tale of family, danger, and the unyielding pursuit of hope."
The first three movies in The Mummy franchise were released from 1999 to 2008, only for a planned fourth movie to be left behind in favor of a Tom Cruise-led reboot which came to theaters in 2017.
But, unfortunately, rumors of The Mummy 4 are false, with no fourth movie currently in development and leaving the franchise at rest (at least, for now).
Will The Mummy 4 Ever Happen?
The studio had once planned for a fourth movie going by The Mummy: Rise of the Aztec to take Brendan Fraser's Rick O'Connell to South America, with John Hannah also returning, Rob Cohen back in the director's chair, and Antonio Banderas coming on board as the movie's main villain.
Maria Bello, the actress behind Rick's wife Evelyn Carnahan O’Connell, revealed to MTV "[there will] absolutely be The Mummy 4," although she was unaware of when that would be made. But alas, that never came to pass:
“I don’t know when, but it’s going. [There will] absolutely be The Mummy 4,” said Bello.
It appeared Universal was lining up Rick's son, Alex O'Connell, to carry the franchise forward as Bloody Disgusting revealed the actor behind him, Luke Ford, had signed a three-picture deal. This seems to suggest the studio had planned for both a fourth and fifth movie in which Ford would have played a major role.
The movie got as far as a screenplay being commissioned with plans to release The Mummy 4 somewhere between 2010 and 2011. Instead, as the cinematic universe trend began to rise in Hollywood amid the success of the MCU, Universal began laying out plans for the Dark Universe and a reboot of The Mummy.
Universal had planned for 2017's The Mummy to launch the Dark Universe as a shared world of rebooted monster flicks. But after that movie proved to be a critical and financial disaster, losing the studio around $95 million, those plans were shelved, and the Dark Universe was left dead on arrival.
But could the studio ever revisit the original Mummy franchise? Well, Brendan Fraser is certainly on board as he told Deadline in January to "sign [him] up" to the prospect, largely out of interest for work of any kind:
"It’s kind of an open-ended question for some time now. I’m not opposed to it, I don’t know an actor who doesn’t want a job. I don’t think I’ve been this famous and unsalaried at the same time in my professional life so sign me up!”
He also told Variety last year he "[doesn't] know how it would work," but he would be "open" to revisiting the role that made him a Hollywood star if "someone came up with the right conceit.”
The demand for Brendan Fraser projects has never been higher following his Best Actor win for The Whale, the cancellation of Batgirl (in which he would have played the villain Firefly), and, most recently, Killers of the Flower Moon. As such, there may be no better time for Universal to revisit one of his most iconic roles yet.
Unfortunately, there are no signs of that coming about anytime soon, and Universal is bound to be hesitant to revisit The Mummy in any form after its disastrous Dark Universe reboot attempt. But in an age where several-decade-old movies like Top Gun and Blade Runner have recently got sequels, anything is possible.
