According to The Hollywood Reporter, the new project will reunite Fraser’s roguish explorer Rick O’Connell with Weisz’s bookish but brave Evelyn Carnahan, nearly three decades after the pair first awakened the ancient high priest Imhotep in 1999’s The Mummy.
So why might the third entry in the existing Mummy series be erased from canon? To understand the speculation, let’s first take a quick journey back to where it all began.
What happened in The Mummy and The Mummy Returns?
The film became a global hit, grossing over $422m and turning Fraser into a bona-fide leading man. Its success led to 2001’s The Mummy Returns, a bigger, brasher sequel set a decade later. Now married with an eight-year-old son, Alex, Rick and Evie once again battle Imhotep – this time resurrected by cultists hoping to harness the power of the Scorpion King (Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, in his film debut).
While the sequel leaned more heavily into CGI spectacle, it preserved the pulpy, romantic energy that defined the first adventure. Together, The Mummy and The Mummy Returns became a cornerstone of early-2000s blockbuster nostalgia.
What happened in The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor?
Swapping the sands of Egypt for the mountains of China, the film introduced Jet Li as the villainous Dragon Emperor – an ancient warlord cursed into terracotta form. When Rick and Evie’s now-adult son Alex (Luke Ford) awakens him, the family must reunite to stop the Emperor’s army from conquering the world.
Why might the new Mummy sequel ignore Tomb of the Dragon Emperor?
It also suffered from another major shift: Rachel Weisz declined to return as Evelyn, reportedly due to script concerns and the long overseas shoot, and was replaced by Maria Bello – a recast that disrupted the chemistry fans loved between Weisz and Brendan Fraser.
Ignoring it would let the new Mummy sequel streamline the story, return to the tone and mythology of the first two adventures, and reunite the original leads without awkward narrative baggage, effectively giving The Mummy franchise the chance to rediscover its original magic.
In an age of legacy sequels like Top Gun: Maverick and Ghostbusters: Afterlife, audiences have shown they’ll reward respectful revivals that capture the old magic. A Mummy film that honours its first two adventures while quietly brushing aside the missteps of the third fits that pattern perfectly.
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