John Hannah is also returning for The Mummy reboot, joining Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz. It’s due out in May 2028. Update: Universal’s 2028 reboot of The Mummy is getting another returning star – John Hannah, who’ll join Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz in what is increasingly looking like a nostalgia-filled reunion of the run ... The Mummy | John Hannah returning with Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz for 2028 reboot
John Hannah is also returning for The Mummy reboot, joining Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz. It’s due out in May 2028.
Update: Universal’s 2028 reboot of The Mummy is getting another returning star – John Hannah, who’ll join Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz in what is increasingly looking like a nostalgia-filled reunion of the run of films which began in 1999.
In those films, Hannah (pictured above left) played thew conniving thief Jonathan, brother of Weisz’s Evie and the franchise’s wild card. The last time we saw Jonathan was in 2008’s The Mummy: Tomb Of The Dragon Emperor, where he was running a dodgy nightclub in Shanghai.
Radio Silence, who we recently spoke to to for Ready Or Not 2: Here I Come, are directing, with filming due to begin on the new Mummy this autumn according to The Hollywood Reporter.
Plot details for the reboot are currently thinner than a dead Pharoah’s desiccated skin, but we’re sure more news will emerge from the production in the coming months. Prediction: with Radio Silence at the helm, expect the film to contain lots of exploding bodies.
The Mummy: Reboot Of Ra (as we’re calling it) is due for release on the 19th May 2028.
Our earlier story follows…
11th February 2026: Universal has confirmed that Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz are returning to make a fourth film in The Mummy – the first since 2008’s Tomb Of The Dragon Emperor.
As previously reported, it will be made by filmmaking collective Radio Silence, directors of Ready Or Not and Abigail. According to Deadline, there’s also a release date booked: 19th May 2028. There’s no official title yet, but more details are sure to emerge in due course.
Previously…
21st November 2025: Days after reports of a return to the late 90s/2000s with a reboot of The Mummy, Brendan Fraser has confirmed that talks are underway for some sort of sequel.
Talking to the Associated Press, Fraser – star of 1999’s The Mummy and its two sequels – said that he’d been “waiting 20 years for this call,” which certainly suggests that he’s been having conversations about reprising his star-making role as hero Rick O’Connell.
His comments also suggest that the film he’s set to appear in will be closer to initial plans for the second sequel -what became The Mummy: Tomb Of The Dragon Emperor, released in 2002. That film felt markedly different from its predecessors – largely, Fraser said, because NBC (which owns Universal) had a deal to broadcast the China Olympics.
“The one I wanted to make was never made,” Fraser said. “The third one was a model of … how can I say this to the AP reporter? NBC had the rights to broadcast the Olympics that year. So they put two together and we went to China. Working in Shanghai, an incredible experience. 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.”
The next Mummy, Fraser said, would be a chance to make the sequel he’s wanted for over 20 years.
“The one I wanted to make is forthcoming,” Fraser said. “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.”
Time will tell whether The Mummy actually happens. For now, it certainly sounds as though Fraser is on board with the idea.
Even earlier
5th November: Forget the Dark Universe – for its planned reboot of The Mummy, Universal Pictures is heading back to 1999. Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz, the duo who brought a spark of matinee charm to that pre-millennium adventure, are said to be in talks to reprise their roles as Rick and Evelyn.
Their inclusion could suggest that Universal’s thinking about a return to the light-hearted tone of the 1999 film and its sequels, though the announcement that Radio Silence are set to direct also hints that the new movie will also hark back to The Mummy's horror roots.
A filmmaking collective comprising Matt Bettinelli-Olpin,Tyler Gillet, Justin Martinez and Chad Villella, Radio Silence broke through with their blackly comic horror Ready Or Not in 2019, before successfully rebooting the Scream slasher franchise with a pair of films in 2022 and 2023. Most recently, they made the toothsome horror, Abigail. All are filled with sense of mischief amid the gore and mayhem – all things that could make for a darkly entertaining Mummy reboot, though they’ll probably have to tone down the claret a bit.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, the new film could serve as a sequel as well as a reboot, with one of their sources saying the script – by David Coggeshall – will ignore the third film and pick events up from the end of 2001’s The Mummy Returns.
Universal will almost certainly ignore 2017’s The Mummy – a really weird action fantasy that tried to be a summer blockbuster, a reboot of the Universal Monsters franchise, and a vehicle for Tom Cruise. The expensive mash-up was supposed to launch a flotilla of interconnected Dark Universe sequels, but its tepid performance nipped all that in the bud.
Over 25 years on, and there’s still plenty of affection for director Stephen Sommers’ The Mummy from 1999, which took the horror and archaeology premise of the Boris Karloff 1932 original and fused it with Indiana Jones-style vim. The Mummy Returns (2001) didn’t have the same magic, and the franchise went into different territory with the 2002 prequel The Scorpion King (an early hit for Dwayne Johnson) and the second sequel, The Mummy: Tomb Of The Dragon Emperor.
Will Universal recapture lightning in a bottle by bringing Fraser and Weisz back? We’ll have to wait and see.
More on this as we get it.
