‘The Mummy 4’ Directors Say Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz Wouldn’t Return Unless ‘They Loved the Script’: ‘It’s Beautiful, Scary and Sweeping’

“The Mummy 4” directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett recently spoke to Entertainment Weekly on their press tour for “Ready or Not 2: Here I Come” and teased the upcoming sequel as “really, really beautiful and scary and sweeping, and it’s awesome.” Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz are reuniting for the movie as Rick and Evelyn O’Connell, respectively.

via: EW

Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett, the directing duo known professionally as Radio Silence, are still quite gobsmacked that they get to reunite Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz for another Mummy movie. It was a big moment for Millennials, and in particular bisexual Millennials (we'll unpack that in a bit), when Universal announced the resurrection of this swashbuckling horror-comedy franchise last November. Gillet calls it "a dream project," one they never thought would actually happen.

"It's just really, really beautiful and scary and sweeping, and it's awesome," he tells Entertainment Weekly of the new script while making the press rounds for Ready or Not 2: Here I Come.

The pair share the story of how, for lack of a better phrase, they made it happen. They credit William Sherrick, a producer on all their films, starting with Ready or Not (2019) through two Scream movies (2022, 2023) to the Ready or Not sequel (in theaters March 20). They were all working together on the set of Abigail, Radio Silence's 2024 vampire ballerina film, when the subject of The Mummy came up.

"William's always way ahead of us," Gillett says. "Matt and I, what we're doing next is we're finishing the day, we have eight setups, and William's always talking about the next thing. And he was like, 'Hey, I think I'm gonna get us Mummy.' In our heads, we're going, 'That'd be f---ing crazy. There's no way William's gonna pull it off.'"

Boy, were they wrong. "Cut to, we're finishing Abigail, and we're meeting with Dave Coggeshall, the writer, and we're designing a pitch," Gillett continues. "We have been in this line of work long enough to know that nothing is real until it's very, very real. It's all speculative, and it feels great to give energy to really wonderful ideas, but we have learned to keep those opportunities a little bit at arm's distance because it's just easy to have your heart broken."

The Mummy (1999) introduced Fraser as Rick O'Connell, an American treasure hunter, and Weisz as Evelyn Carnahan, a British librarian and expert in Ancient Egypt. Together with Evie's dysfunctional older brother Jonathan (John Hannah), they track down the mythical Hamunaptra, a.k.a. "City of the Dead," and accidentally resurrect Imhotep (Arnold Vosloo), a centuries-old high priest who brings about the Biblical plagues upon his return.

The success led to The Mummy Returns (2001), which introduced Dwayne Johnson as the Scorpion King and led to that character's 2002 spinoff. The franchise also delivered a formal third entry, The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor (2008), with Jet Li as the titular mummy, only this time, Weisz did not return as Evelyn. She was replaced at the time with Maria Bello.

Most fans don't really talk about that installment. When asked if they consider it canon to their new movie, Bettinelli-Olpin replies, "Well, Rachel is in this one."

"That should answer the question for you," Gillett adds.

Bettinelli-Olpin further teases the script for The Mummy 4 that Coggeshall, who previously scripted the Family Plan movies and Orphan: First Kill, cooked up, saying it "had all of the heart and the character that you could hope for."

"I don't think Brendan and Rachel are getting involved unless they love that script, and what they read, I think they really liked," he says. "And it's a good script. It's gonna be fun to make."

Gillet is also very aware of the particular resonance these films had with the still-existent fan base. He's seen all the thirst trap memes around young Fraser and Weisz that posit The Mummy was a bisexual awakening for many in the late '90s.

"I had a surgery not too long ago, and the nurse actually looked at my name on the chart and was like, 'Oh wait! You're doing the next Mummy movie?'" Gillett recalls. "She was like, 'That movie, it was like an awakening for me.'"

It's something he loves hearing as Radio Silence charts this next adventure. "I am so stoked about that," Gillett says. "Anytime a piece of entertainment can have an effect on your personal life or the way that you view the world, what an amazing thing. And by the way, to do it the way the Mummy movies did it with such kindness and fun and entertainment forward, that's an amazing lineage to get to follow in the footsteps of. It's not lost on us that we are inheriting now another truly wonderful franchise. We just are so humbled and so grateful to get to continue on."