Brendan Fraser will reprise his most iconic role in The Mummy 4 as adventurer Rick O'Connell. As we first reported on SFFGazette.com, the latest set photos reveal a first look at the actor's long-awaited return as the hero.
Over the years, O'Connell has drawn favourable comparisons to Indiana Jones. While some fans have questioned whether Fraser can still do the character justice, he looks fantastic here. The Oscar-winner has been transparent about the training required for The Mummy 4; clearly, he's put in the work and now appears ready for action.
In the photos, we see O'Connell in a land speed vehicle which he's named "Evelyn," seemingly confirming that romance is still blossoming between the two.
That's a stuntman in the car, but Fraser was spotted looking a little scorched, suggesting his attempt to break the land speed record ends with him crashing and burning. That seems very in-character for Rick, and this should be a fun sequence in The Mummy 4.
"We’re gonna get the band back together," Fraser previously said. "The only way to do it. So, we are going to give the audience what they have been bothering all of us for, for the last twenty-whatever years."
"I was hopeful for a long while, and then I was like, 'I don’t know if they are.’'Then other 'Mummy' movies got made. But listen, what we’re gonna do is saddle back up, go back to the locations — I should probably stop talking like this, because I don’t want to give everything away."
"Please wish me luck," he said about his training, with recent reports suggesting he's shed upwards of 40lbs. "I’m doing my best to get this 57-year-old gear in shape."
The Mummy franchise began in 1999. It introduced moviegoers to Fraser's Rick O'Connell and Rachel Weisz's Evelyn Carnahan, and following their clash with the resurrected Imhotep, the duo returned in 2001's The Mummy Returns, which introduced Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson's Scorpion King (he's rumoured to be back for this fourth chapter, too).
In 2002, that character was front and centre in his own ill-fated spin-off, before the franchise rose from the dead in 2008 with The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor. That didn't receive the warmest response, and won't be treated as canon in this next chapter.
Starring Brendan Fraser, Rachel Weisz, John Hannah, Arnold Vosloo, Oded Fehr, Kevin J. O'Connor, Michael Johnston, and Numan Acar, The Mummy 4 is directed by Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett, aka Radio Silence.
David Coggeshall (The Family Plan, Orphan: First Kill) wrote the screenplay for this next instalment of the franchise, with Sean Daniel returning as a producer. William Sherak, James Vanderbilt and Paul Neinstein will produce through Project X Entertainment, and they're frequent collaborators with the movie's directors, Radio Silence.
The Mummy 4 arrives in theaters on May 19, 2028.