Brendan Fraser: ‘Doing My Best’ To Get in Shape For New ‘Mummy’
Brendan Fraser says the rumors are true — a new Mummy movie, the first (at least the first featuring his cast) is in the works. And he’s currently getting ready to portray heroic swashbuckler Rick O’Connell for the first time in nearly 20 years.“Please wish me luck,” Fraser joked during an appearance on The Tonight Show. “I’m doing my best to get this 57-year-old gear in shape.”Fraser’s last Mummy was released in 2007. That was The Mummy: The Tomb of the Dragon Emperor. Fraser also starred in 1999’s The Mummy and 2001’s The Mummy Returns. In both of those films he appeared with Rachel Weisz as glamorous librarian Evy who, naturally, falls for the hunky Rick.Weisz was replaced by Maria Bello for Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, but Fraser confirmed that for this new Mummy “we’re gonna get the band back together.”“The only way to do it,” he added. “We are going to give the audience what they have been bothering all of us for, for the last 20-whatever years.”The Mummy"/>Universal PicturesThe Mummy"/>Universal PicturesREAD MORE: The 100 Best ’90s MoviesAfter The Tomb of the Dragon Emperor in 2007, Universal tried to reboot The Mummy as the first installment in their so-called “Dark Universe,” a planned cinematic universe based on all of their classic monster movies. But The Mummy (2017), starring Tom Cruise as a totally new character who fights a totally different mummy, was a massive critical and commercial flop, and despite a bunch of announced titles, the Dark Universe never released a second project.Earlier this year, Warner Bros. made their own interpretation of mummy movies, which was called Lee Cronin’s The Mummy. (You’ll never guess who directed it.) That one was a very different sort of horror film. Instead of an ancient Egyptian mystic who gains supernatural powers (and a bunch of artfully distressed wrappings all over his body) and a lot of tomb raiding and chases, that film was about a family whose young daughter is kidnapped and then discovered years later inside a sarcophagus.Fraser’s fourth Mummy movie is currently scheduled for release on October 15, 2027. You can watch Fraser’s full Tonight Show interview below:These movies first started out as very different stories.Gallery Credit: Emma Stefansky