The Mummy franchise has been making headlines again in 2026 with the confirmation of another sequel, but many fans don’t need news of a fourth movie to want to revisit the classic 1999 film that started it all. In fact, as somebody who watched the The Mummy many times as one of the best movies of the ‘90s on VHS back in the day, leading man Brendan Fraser’s recent comments about his love for the franchise have me hyped to go back to the world that was introduced to viewers nearly thirty years ago… and it doesn’t hurt that I’d just rewatched the original with my Hulu subscription.
Brendan Fraser was joined by fellow franchise stars John Hannah, Oded Fehr, and Patricia Velasquez on the stage at Fan Expo Cleveland for a Mummy reunion. In front of a packed room of fans (who largely seemed to be my fellow millennials who had also watched Rick O’Connell and Co. running through the sands of Egypt in the late ‘90s), Fraser addressed the lingering fan love for the movie and the reason why he’s on board to reprise the role decades later:
It means the world to me, sincerely, from the bottom of my heart. It's a movie that brought a lot of people together at a time in our history, going from one century to the next. [We had no] ideas about what it was going to become. And where we find ourselves now, as complicated as it is, we know that this particular storyline, these characters, mean a great deal. The reason we wanted to… The reason to do another one is because of you.
As you can imagine, the room was full of cheers after Brendan Fraser credited fans for motivating him to return to playing Rick O’Connell for the first time since The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor released in theaters (without Rachel Weisz) in 2008, although the original 1999 version and the 2001 sequel remain the favorites among fans.
Article continues belowThe Mummy 4 directors have confirmed Tomb of the Dragon Emperor won’t be considered canon for the new movie, with Weisz returning to her iconic role as Evie O’Connell. Weisz and Brendan Fraser’s reported requirement for signing on was that they love the script, and that seems to be the case. Suffice it to say that for fans of the original cast, the wait for The Mummy 4 in 2028 is going to feel very long!
I rewatched The Mummy for the first time in many years ahead of the cast reunion at Fan Expo Cleveland, and had just about as good a time circa 2026 as I did the all the times I watched it as a kid. It turns out that Rick yelling “Looks to me like you’re on the wrong side of the river!” at Beni is as funny in my 30s as it was as a youngster in the ‘90s, and the action still stands up… as does the horror of how the big bad killed the Americans by stealing all their organs.
All in all, it was a good time ahead of hearing Brendan Fraser’s emotional explanation for wanting to bring his character back to the fans. If you also want to revisit The Mummy, you can find the 1999 original streaming on Hulu now, along with The Mummy Returns and The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor. And if you want to see the 2017 version of The Mummy that starred Tom Cruise but failed to kickstart a new franchise, you can find it streaming with an HBO Max subscription now
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