Brendan Fraser Is Getting His ’57-Year-Old Gear’ in Shape for The Mummy 4

Brendan Fraser is officially back in the desert — or at least, he’s working his way there. The Oscar winner confirmed on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon this week that The Mummy 4 is happening, and that he’s already deep into the work of getting his body ready to play action hero Rick O’Connell again at 57.

“Please wish me luck,” Fraser told Fallon with a laugh. “I’m doing my best to get this 57-year-old gear in shape.”

It’s been 27 years since Fraser first strapped on Rick’s holsters for the 1999 original, and nearly two decades since the last installment in his version of the franchise. But fans haven’t stopped asking — and he knows it.

“We’re gonna get the band back together — the only way to do it,” he said. “So we’re going to give the audience what they have been bothering all of us for the last 20-whatever years.”

https://x.com/FallonTonight/status/2052238487743512809/video/

A Sequel That Almost Didn’t Happen

Fraser was candid about the long, uncertain road to getting this film made. After The Mummy Returns in 2001, the franchise went sideways — Rachel Weisz didn’t return for 2008’s Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, with Maria Bello stepping in as Evelyn. Then came Tom Cruise’s 2017 reboot, which attempted to launch Universal’s ill-fated Dark Universe cinematic universe. It flopped critically and commercially, and the whole shared-universe plan was quietly shelved.

Fraser watched all of it from the sidelines. “I was hopeful for a long while, and then I was like, ‘I don’t know if they are,”‘ he told Fallon. “Other Mummy movies got made.”

In 2022, he told Variety that Cruise’s version was “too much of a straight-ahead horror movie,” adding that the franchise works best as a thrill ride rather than a straight horror film. “I know how difficult it is to pull it off,” he said at the time. “I tried to do it three times.”

Now, finally, it’s happening — and on his terms. Weisz is back. The original spirit is back. And if Fraser has anything to say about it, the locations are back too.

Real Locations, Original Energy

One of the most tantalizing details Fraser let slip — before catching himself — was about the production’s approach to filming. “What we’re gonna do is saddle back up, go back to the locations,” he said, then added: “I should probably stop talking like this, because I don’t want to give everything away.”

No official plot details have been released, but the implication is clear: this sequel is going practical, taking the cast back to real environments rather than relying on soundstages. Given that the original films drew much of their charm from their dusty, sun-baked Egyptian atmosphere, that’s exactly what fans will want to hear.

Fraser also showed Fallon a photo from a recent visit to The Mummy ride at Universal Studios — apparently part of his method prep, or at least a very on-brand warm-up. He even quipped about being warned not to wear his hat on the rollercoaster.

The film will pick up from The Mummy Returns rather than the third installment — which makes sense, given Weisz’s absence from that one. Whether it jumps forward in time from the 1930s setting or flashes back remains to be seen, but the O’Connells are coming back as a team.

The Right Directors for the Job

Behind the camera, Universal has handed the keys to Radio Silence — the directing duo of Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett, who made their names with Ready or Not and the recent Scream reboots. They know how to build tension and keep audiences on the edge of their seats, but they also understand how to balance scares with crowd-pleasing fun. The script comes from David Coggeshall.

It’s a pairing that suggests Universal has learned its lesson from the Cruise reboot: The Mummy works when it’s a swashbuckling adventure with horror elements, not the other way around. The original films owed more to Indiana Jones than to the classic 1932 Boris Karloff picture, and that’s the lane this new chapter appears to be driving back into.

A Very Busy Fraser

Getting into Rick O’Connell shape is just one item on Fraser’s increasingly packed schedule. This month, he stars alongside Bill Murray, Dustin Hoffman, Vicky Krieps, and director Andy Garcia in the crime drama Diamond, which premieres at the Cannes Film Festival. On May 29, he’ll be seen playing President Dwight D. Eisenhower in Pressure, the true story behind the D-Day weather forecast.

He’s also just signed on to star in Starman, a sci-fi film written and directed by Josh Wakely (Beat Bugs, Motown Magic) in which Fraser plays Tom Adams, a visionary technologist leading a mission to Mars that goes dangerously wrong. David S. Goyer (The Dark Knight) is executive producing, and production begins this summer. The project is being shopped at Cannes this month.

All of this is the continuation of a remarkable second act for Fraser, who won the Academy Award for Best Actor in 2023 for The Whale after years away from the spotlight. The comeback has been everything.

The Mummy 4 opens in theaters on October 15, 2027.