Like Brendan Fraser, The Mummy franchise hasn’t had much luck over the past decade or so. However, with Fraser seemingly back on the scene following a triumphant performance in 2023’s The Whale, the question of whether Universal’s bandaged-clad saga still has legs was bound to come up. In fact, fans were asking Fraser about a return to the sands of Egypt shortly after the 2017 reboot came out.
The Mummy Returns
The problem is that The Mummy is a bit of a collapsed tomb at the moment. Originally a remake of the 1932 movie starring Boris Karloff as Imhotep, 1999’s version of the film was a huge hit with fans, seemingly filling the gap left by the swashbuckling Indiana Jones. Doctor Jones hadn’t been seen for ten years and one month at that point – and Jon Turteltaub’s similar romp, National Treasure, was still half a decade away.
So, The Mummy arrived at just the right time. Much the same could be said about The Mummy Returns (2001), which featured the same cast with the addition of Dwayne Johnson’s Scorpion King. Things went south from that point onwards. The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor was successful only in disappointing audiences – and the less said about that 2017 film, the better.
Remarkably, despite having CGI that would make Marvel blush, the related The Scorpion King movies continued. As of 2018, the series was on its fifth movie about Mathayus, our arachnid liege, with a sixth due for release at some point in the future. It hasn’t been without its share of big names either. Ron Perlman, Billy Zane, Lou Ferrigno, and Rutger Hauer have all starred in the franchise at some point.
Assassin’s Creed
Unfortunately, as mentioned, The Mummy has all but rotted away – somewhat ironically given the permanence of the subject matter in popular culture. Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed did a stand-up job of representing Ancient Egypt in 2017 but online gaming sites have been borrowing the civilization’s iconography for quite some time now. The deity-starring Eye of Horus slot on the Buzz Bingo website features all sorts of bird- and dog-headed creatures.
Buzz Bingo has around ten games dedicated to Egypt, including Age of Egypt, Mistress of Egypt, and Egyptian Emeralds. The obvious question to ask, then, is why does Universal seem to have re-buried The Mummy? The answer seems to have something to do with how little sense the franchise made after Returns. Let’s be honest, Dragon Emperor, with its recast Evelyn, is now toxic to the series’ lore.
The sensible step would be to reboot The Mummy but that particular angle has already been tried and failed. The 2017 retelling of the classic monster effectively killed off Universal’s plans to make an MCU-style shared universe, making it doubly offensive to executives. Ultimately, The Mummy needs retconning, restarting, and (probably) recasting in its entirety if it’s ever to get out of the pyramid door again.
Still, at least The Scorpion King is still in action. The upcoming reboot will be produced by Dwayne Johnson, which perhaps gives a glimmer of hope for The Mummy in the future if it succeeds.
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