The Mummy 4 has a release date, a director, a cast, a script, and a start of production scheduled for this summer.
What it did not have until Wednesday was any official marketing. Universal Studios changed that with a single photograph, and its choice of image tells you something about the tone they are going for.
The photo shows Brendan Fraser seated in the front row of Revenge of the Mummy: The Ride at Universal Studios Hollywood, flanked by directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett of the filmmaking duo Radio Silence.
All three appear to be having a genuinely good time.
Universal captioned the Instagram post, “Getting back into character! Brendan Fraser had a blast braving Revenge of the Mummy: The Ride at Universal Studios in preparation for reprising the role of Rick O’Connell.”
It is a playful opening move. The ride is based on the 1999 and 2001 films that made Fraser a global star.
Sending the returning lead and the new directors to sit in the thing together and ride it as the first official image of the production is a way of communicating something without saying it directly, that this is a continuation of something people already love, made by people who understand why they love it.
Filming begins this summer.
What Is The Mummy 4 Going To Be About?
The Mummy 4 is a direct continuation of the franchise that began in 1999 with Stephen Sommers’ The Mummy and continued with The Mummy Returns in 2001.
It is not a reboot, not a remake, and not connected in any way to the 2017 Tom Cruise version that Universal attempted as the launching point for a shared monster universe they called the Dark Universe.
That film failed critically and commercially and ended the Dark Universe concept before it began. The Fraser franchise is its own separate lineage entirely.
The film is also, and this is worth stating clearly given that another Mummy film from a completely different studio is currently in theaters, not connected to director Lee Cronin’s The Mummy, which opened April 17 from Warner Bros. as a horror reimagining of the mummy concept.
Brendan Fraser is not in that film. That film has nothing to do with Rick O’Connell, the O’Connell family, or anything from the 1999-2008 trilogy.
Two different studios, two different Mummies in the same calendar year, no connection between them.
The Mummy 4 is directed by Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett, the Radio Silence filmmakers best known for resurrecting the Scream franchise in 2022 and 2023 and for the horror-thriller Ready or Not.
They also directed Abigail in 2024 and earlier in 2026 released Ready or Not 2: Here I Come. The script was written by David Coggeshall, whose credits include Orphan: First Kill and The Family Plan.
The film is produced by William Sherak, James Vanderbilt, and Paul Neinstein through Project X Entertainment. Brendan Fraser is also an executive producer. The wide theatrical release date is May 19, 2028.
Mummy 4 Cast
The returning cast is what has driven the excitement around this film since it was confirmed in February 2026.
Fraser is back as Rick O’Connell. Rachel Weisz is back as Egyptologist Evelyn O’Connell. John Hannah is back as Jonathan Carnahan, Evelyn’s bumbling older brother.
Weisz’s return is significant. She starred in the first two films but was replaced by Maria Bello in The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor in 2008, the franchise’s weakest entry by most accounts, made during a period when Fraser’s star was already beginning to dim.
The filmmakers have been clear about what Weisz’s presence in The Mummy 4 means for Dragon Emperor’s place in the story.
When asked whether the 2008 film is still considered canon, Bettinelli-Olpin answered simply, “Rachel is in this one.”
Gillett followed, “That should answer the question for you.” Dragon Emperor is being written out. The fourth film picks up from The Mummy Returns, not from the third film.
The decision to bring back the original trio, Fraser, Weisz, and Hannah, is a deliberate restoration of the chemistry that made the first two films work so well.
Rick and Evelyn O’Connell were one of the more entertaining couples in mainstream adventure cinema at the turn of the millennium, and the dynamic between them and Jonathan was a significant part of why audiences kept coming back.
Hannah’s character was announced as returning in March 2026.
How Radio Silence Ended Up Directing It
The story of how Bettinelli-Olpin and Gillett got The Mummy 4 involves their longtime producer William Sherak, who presented the idea to them while they were in the middle of making Abigail.
Their reaction at the time, per their own account, was straightforward scepticism. “That’d be fucking crazy,” they thought. “There’s no way William’s gonna pull it off.”
By the time Abigail wrapped, they were sitting with screenwriter David Coggeshall developing a pitch.
Their framework for taking on an existing franchise was established by their experience with Scream. They had described it then as needing to feel special rather than mechanical.
Gillett used the same language when talking about The Mummy 4, “Having stepped into Scream, our radar for jumping into another franchise is that it has to feel special. And the script really does that.”
Both directors have described the Coggeshall script as beautiful, scary, and sweeping, the kind of scope the franchise had in its best moments without abandoning the horror elements that are theoretically at the concept’s core but which the adventure films tended to soften considerably.
Bettinelli-Olpin added that the script has “all of the heart and the character that you could hope for.”
On whether the leads would actually commit: Gillett said “I don’t think Brendan and Rachel are getting involved unless they love that script, and what they read, I think they really liked.”
What Has Fraser Said?
Fraser has been publicly enthusiastic about The Mummy 4 in a way that reads as genuine rather than promotional.
He told the Associated Press last year that he had been waiting for it for two decades:
“The one I wanted to make is forthcoming. And I’ve been waiting 20 years for this call. Sometimes it was loud, sometimes it was a faint telegraph. Now? It’s time to give the fans what they want.”
On the third film, which went to China and swapped out most of the original team including Weisz, he was measured but honest.
The Olympics were the context, NBC had the broadcast rights that year and Universal attached the film to that commercial moment. “I’m proud of the third one because I think it’s a good standalone movie. We picked up and did what we do with a different crew on deck and gave it our best shot. But the one I wanted to make is forthcoming.”
The phrase “the one I wanted to make” is the most telling thing he has said about this project. It implies that The Mummy 4 is not simply a continuation of the franchise but something specific, a version of the story he had in mind but never got to tell.
Whatever Coggeshall has written, it apparently aligns with that.
The Brenaissance And Why This Matters
Fraser’s return to Rick O’Connell is the culmination of one of the more remarkable career turnarounds in recent Hollywood memory.
The Mummy made him a star in 1999 at the age of 30, and for several years he was one of the most recognizable faces in mainstream action-adventure cinema.
That trajectory stalled, and by the mid-2010s he had largely disappeared from major productions amid personal setbacks he has since spoken about publicly.
The Brenaissance, the name that attached itself to his gradual return to prominence, built slowly before accelerating sharply in 2022 and 2023.
His performance in Darren Aronofsky’s The Whale brought him back into awards conversation and ultimately won him the Best Actor Oscar in 2023.
That recognition mattered practically as well as symbolically. It established him as a leading man again at a level that large-scale productions could justify.
The Mummy 4 is the first major franchise picture of the post-Oscar era of his career.
The original Mummy grossed $417 million worldwide in 1999 and established Fraser as the kind of actor who could carry an effects-heavy adventure film with charm and physicality.
The franchise also launched a spin-off in The Scorpion King in 2002, which introduced Dwayne Johnson, and a tie-in animated series that ran from 2001 to 2003.
By the time Dragon Emperor came out in 2008, the franchise was clearly winding down. Nobody expected a fourth film to happen at all, let alone one that brings back the original leads and hires filmmakers with a genuine track record in genre cinema.
The photo from Wednesday, Fraser grinning on a theme park ride he has been adjacent to for 25 years, is the official start of the promotional campaign for a film that will not arrive for more than two years.
That Universal led with it rather than a more conventional first-look image says something about how they want audiences to feel about this revival.
