Earlier this week, the news broke that Evil Dead Rise director Lee Cronin's take on The Mummy had been retitled The Resurrected. Now, we may know why. Deadline has revealed that Universal Pictures, the same studio behind Cronin's reboot, is in talks with Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz to resurrect The Mummy franchise from the '90s and 2000s.
The actors will reprise their roles as Rick O'Connell and Evelyn O'Connell, respectively.
Radio Silence's Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett (Scream, Abigail) are set to direct the movie from a script by David Coggeshall (The Deliverance). Franchise veteran Sean Daniel would produce alongside William Sherak, James Vanderbilt, and Paul Neinstein of Project X Entertainment.
Plot details are, somewhat appropriately, being kept under wraps. There have been rumours for a while that Fraser might return to head up another Mummy movie, while we've also heard chatter about Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson reprising his role as The Scorpion King in a future project. Could this be it?
Fraser and Weisz shared the screen in two Mummy movies: 1999's The Mummy and 2001's The Mummy Returns. Stephen Sommers directed those, and both grossed over $400 million worldwide (adjusted for inflation, that's close to $800 million apiece).
The movies were so popular that theme park attractions and a spin-off, The Scorpion King, followed. While not a critical darling, Rob Cohen's The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor in 2008 was another success with a $403 million haul, even though Fraser starred without Weisz.
From there, the franchise sat on the shelf until a 2017 reboot, The Mummy, starring Tom Cruise. Meant to launch Universal's Dark Universe, it was a flop with fans and critics, and the whole idea was scrapped, even after it took in a respectable $409 million.
As the trade explains, "Turning back to The Mummy franchise makes perfect sense for Universal, given the real wave of millennial nostalgia for both all things Fraser and his Mummy films, in particular. This built-in fandom would be an asset at a time when the studio has fared poorly at the box office with its attempts at modern movie monster flicks, including Abigail, directed by the duo from Radio Silence."
1999's The Mummy is a rousing, suspenseful and horrifying epic about an expedition of treasure-seeking explorers in the Sahara Desert in 1925. Stumbling upon an ancient tomb, the hunters unwittingly set loose a 3,000-year-old legacy of terror, which is embodied in the vengeful reincarnation of an Egyptian priest who had been sentenced to an eternity as one of the living dead.
Are you excited to see The Mummy return?